


Blackbird, Fly

by Distractivate



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bunkers, DIY Lube Experiments, Dark Humor/Banter, Discussion of Death/Loss (no character deaths), Emotional/Actual Scars, Food Kink, It's the End of the World As We Know It But They'll Be Fine, Lots of Happy Stuff Too I Promise, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Misc other content in chapter notes, No REM Songs are Featured, Oral Sex, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-05 21:27:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 62,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distractivate/pseuds/Distractivate
Summary: David trails his hand against the smooth concrete surface of the silo wall on his way back down the ramp from Patrick’s office, thinking about their conversation about upstairs.It’s terrifying when you first see it,Patrick had said. David closes his eyes, putting one foot and then the other on the concrete. He imagines he is walking on the road his family took to get to the silo their last day upstairs. He tries to picture the dull light, the gray-green trees, the warm air closing around him. He tries to focus on the silence, on the tap-scrape pulse of his rubber soles on the pavement. He imagines walking as far as his legs will take him.He didn’t even realize how badly he wanted to be free of this place until he sat down in Patrick’s office.OR A Schitt's Creek post-apocalyptic AU.





	1. Blackbird singing in the dead of night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I tell you how much I stressed about tone for this story? This story is structured something like one of those paint color cards you get at the hardware store. The first chapters are darker, and the chapters get gradually lighter as we approach the end. There are heavier, angstier parts of this, but it’s not all that. It’s not even mostly that. Ultimately, this is about a world coming back to life, not a world dying. 
> 
> I’ve chosen not to be specific about what exactly caused the destruction and simply describe the aftermath. I think we all have our opinions on what is most likely to bring about an altered world order. Feel free to insert your own. 
> 
> There is (too much) philosophizing in the end notes of each chapter if you want more about my various inspirations for this world.
> 
> Thanks to my beta [Pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smarty_Pants/pseuds/Pants), who cheered me on, kept my tenses and typos in line, showed me what wasn't making sense, and occasionally reminded me that this is a love story (ahem).

It’s easier with his eyes closed, putting one foot and then the other on the concrete. He can imagine he is walking home on West 16th Street, the wavering overhead light caused by the sun filtering through intermittent trees. His memory takes in the dull hum of the mechanical system and replaces it with the pulse of cars passing on the road, with the thump-thump as their suspensions hit a pothole at the crosswalk. He lets his body recall the smell of curry as he’d walk by the Masala Fresh food truck that always parked on his block, the lively flower boxes on the buff-colored building on the corner, the cool tickle of the early fall air on his skin—until he’s immersed enough to breathe normally. It’s the only thing that helps when he’s overwhelmed like this, wondering if he will ever have the chance to walk across a wide swath of earth again, limited only by the distance his legs will take him.

When he opens his eyes, the memory splinters. He’s back inside, climbing up the sloping corridor. It’s a continuous spiral, the service track between upstairs, where the world was once on fire, and the bottom of the old missile silo, ten tiers below. The ramp wraps around the housing chambers and offices and the shared spaces in between like the threads on a screw, stranding David between the depths of the silo and the vague gray sky, forever on a continuum between darkness and light.

To his knowledge, David is the only one who takes the ramp to move through the place. It is by far the longest route, with gray concrete walls on one side and dull white walls punctuated by maple veneer doors on the other, someone’s afterthought attempt to bring nature and warmth to this concrete-encased world below grade. Most people take the tight column of stairs in the lightwell, injecting their day with the briefest periods of fatigue like maybe they are doing something besides waiting for the world to turn right-side up again. 

David prefers the solitude of the ramp, the only place he is unlikely to encounter a representative of the other twelve families stacked above and below the chamber he now shares with his sister. He sometimes spends hours this way, walking, recalling a place from his old life, imagining his feet treading on the surface of the earth instead of spiraling far below it.

Accustomed as he is to circling up and down alone, it’s something of a shock when David sees someone else, shoulders heaving, head buried in his hands, body slumped against the wall just a few feet up the ramp from the landing at Tier 2. The other man sees David and stands hastily, rubbing his eyes on the sleeve of his blue thermal shirt.

Their eyes meet and David’s next step falters as the man pauses with his hand on the nearest door. There is something unsettling reflected in his red, harried eyes. It feels a bit like looking in the mirror actually, despite there being nothing particularly similar about their appearances. The man nods, almost imperceptibly, and ducks into the office next to him, closing the door behind. 

David stops in front of the door. Adhered to the wood-grain surface is a sign that identifies the office as that belonging to the Reentry Coordinator. It’s a room that’s been empty since David arrived in the silo, sitting ominously door-ajar, as though there is no plan for reentry to the world above and therefore never a person in charge of coordinating it. 

Now, it seems, the office has an occupant. In the whiteboard under the Reentry Coordinator label—a whiteboard David sometimes enjoys decorating with lewd sketches when he’s feeling particularly restless—a series of tidy block letters spell _PATRICK BREWER_.

\-----

Despite any number of arresting features, Patrick noticed the wings first. Not actual wings—they haven’t descended that far into science fiction, he muses—but glossy, graphic gray-outlined wings across the shoulders of his matte black sweatshirt. He can hear the man pause outside the door, the gap at the bottom darkened by his shadow.

Patrick’s brain ticks through the file: David Rose, mid-30s, lives with his sister Alexis, late 20s, in the chamber next to their parents on Tier 7. Originally from New York. David had an online food and lifestyle blog called _Slice of Life_, which featured a different pizza restaurant every week along with restaurant reviews, modern art commentary, and personal care articles. His mother Moira was a soap opera star. His father Johnny ran a digital streaming and content service with offices in Silicon Valley. The family has somewhat complicated interpersonal dynamics, or so the file said. Patrick is pretty sure that is Ray Butani’s polite way of saying dysfunctional. 

Patrick knows everyone in this silo, Bunker 13, on paper. Knows everyone in all fourteen of Butani’s network of silos in the ten-square-mile area. He’s spent hours with their files, with their faces, learning their names. Names are important upstairs. As people begin to reach out from their separate enclaves, sharing stories of who and where and how they survived, names float from outpost to outpost on the wind, whispers of who is trustworthy and who is dangerous and who tends to play both sides. Upstairs, learning names, learning to attach faces to those names, is a matter of survival. It’s one of the many ways Patrick has learned to navigate this new world. He learned the names of everyone in this bunker before today, his first day here, so that he won’t encounter a single person downstairs who he hasn’t already met on paper. 

That’s how he knows, locked in that moment on the ramp, that he has just encountered David Rose.

There’s a soft knock on the door; he doesn’t answer. Instead he rests his forehead on the desk and repeats the same phrases he has been telling himself since Ray assigned him to this job: This job is important. They need help upstairs. I’m good at this. It’s just three hours a day. Every day will get easier. Ray needs this. Ray’s done a lot for me. I’m safe here. Fear is a liar and a construct. I can leave whenever I want. I can leave whenever I want. I can leave whenever I want.

\-----

When his knock goes unanswered, David continues on to his original destination, Stevie’s office on Tier 2 at the center of the Operations Center. True to form, she’s playing solitaire with a deck of cards on her desk.

“How’s my favorite operations manager today?” David asks brightly. 

“What do you want?” Stevie narrows her eyes.

“What do you mean? I want to see my best friend and share burned tilapia and over-steamed arugula for the sixth time this week. Is something wrong with that?”

“You want something,” she says. 

She doesn’t push it yet; she knows better. Stevie doesn’t let most people in her space, much less in her head, but David has been the exception to the rule pretty much from the first day in the bunker when she shared her last little bit of weed with him in the storage room at the bottom of the silo. 

She lays down three cards from the stack in her hand and David takes the ace of clubs off the top, putting it next to the ace of spades in front of him and stacking the two of clubs from one of Stevie’s other piles on top of it. Stevie lets him move cards around as she deals out three more, waiting patiently for him to spill whatever he’s here to talk about.

“So I heard a rumor,” David says, sliding his fingers nervously along the edge of the desk.

“Oh?” Stevie asks, suppressing a smile at having won this round of outwaiting each other. 

“Are they going to start letting people upstairs?” David asks, voice low like maybe nobody else knows about the man on the ramp.

“It’s been discussed,” Stevie hedges.

She moves the five of clubs onto the six of hearts, freeing up a column and turning over the next card at the top.

“And?” he prods, poking her calf under the desk with the toe of his sneaker. She nudges back a little, pushing him off. He bumps her with his foot again harder just to do it, and she glares at him. He smirks a little, but puts his feet back under his chair.

“And someone will be here for a few hours every day to train people that want to go,” she says evenly, like it’s not the biggest thing that has happened since they locked themselves down here.

“Someone from where?” David asks. He can’t think of another time someone new arrived in the silo in the entire four years he has been here. The staff occasionally goes between the silos, but never past the security perimeter—or so he thought.

Stevie gives him a long look, and then her eyes seem to light from within. He can tell she knows. She’s not sure what she knows, but she knows there’s more to this line of questioning. 

“It’s someone who lives up there,” she says with a casual shrug, refusing to give more intel than is asked for.

“People live up there?” he asks, forgetting to be discreet. 

She puts the king of diamonds on the appropriate ace pile and turns it over before she looks up at him.

“Did you think you all were going to be the first off the ark?” she asks, eyebrow raised. 

“No,” David says, swallowing the word and tucking his hands under his thighs. 

David feels a little silly for thinking they would be, because of course they’re not. Out of the network of silos, Bunkers 13 and 14 are by far the nicest. They were the last to be hit with rations. They have the largest living units, the most amenities, the greatest stockpile of food and water and even delicacies. And it’s all intentional, because these are the residents who could most afford to vanish underground to a bunker skinned in opulence so they wouldn’t have to watch as the world was engulfed. As much as everyone has grown weary with life in the silo, there is a general sense that it’s better than whatever they might encounter upstairs.

“So how many people live up there?” he asks.

“Around here, probably less than two hundred.”

“And elsewhere?” David asks.

She opens her mouth to talk and closes it. She looks back down at the cards.

“Honestly, David, since I’m going to be the last to leave, I try not to think about upstairs.”

“I know. Sorry.” 

He tries another friendly nudge with his foot. Even though her eyes stay down, she nudges him back lightly. 

David’s next question is interrupted by a quick knock on the door frame.

“Hey Stevie, I- Oh. Hi.” It’s the man from the ramp. He has nice . . . everything really, but the first thing David notices is the way his hand grips the door frame hard when he recognizes him, strong and steady. 

David stands up quickly from the chair when he sees him. Something about the way the man carries himself makes David want to be face-to-face. He’s surprised to realize he is the taller of the two. 

“Patrick, this is David Rose. He’s one of our residents,” Stevie says.

“Hi.” David says the word softly. Patrick gives David a wry smile, like he knows they caught each other trying to deal with their shit alone.

“Patrick,” he says. 

“David.” 

It’s a firm handshake, but David’s hand wilts when he notices Patrick’s arm. Patrick’s sleeves are pushed up a little, and as he reaches, his arm turns just enough to reveal a thick, dark pink scar that disappears under his sleeve. It’s not a fresh wound, but still new enough that it must have happened since the world upstairs started burning. The skin is still stretched around it. David wonders what happened. Wonders how far up it goes.

Patrick tucks a finger under the hem of his sleeve and tugs it down self-consciously. 

“We were actually just talking about you,” Stevie says.

“Were you?” Patrick asks, his voice rising a little. That little raise in pitch takes five years off of him, and David smiles. He’s cute. Very cute. 

“Yes. David was curious about your plans for the reentry group,” Stevie offers, like this is a networking event. 

“I was?” David sputters, glaring at Stevie and then turning back to Patrick. Patrick’s mouth twitches, and well, it’s a nice mouth, so naturally David is looking at it.

“We’re looking for applicants to do training to come upstairs,” Patrick explains. His eyes are brown, warm and steady. “We’re hoping some people will be tired of living entombed in concrete.” It’s an odd choice of words, David thinks. _ Entombed. _ And said with just a little bit of smugness.

“Well that’s fun,” David says, speaking of odd choice of words. Patrick’s mouth twitches again.

“Oh, so much fun,” Patrick replies wryly, studying David in a way that is probing, maybe, but not unkind. 

David crosses his arms, and their eyes lock for a long beat. It’s that same feeling again, like he’s looking in a mirror and seeing a reverse copy, familiarity in their contrasts. 

A chime sounds from the lightwell announcing dinner is ready.

“We should go while the food is hot. Did you have a question for me?” Stevie asks Patrick as she shuffles the cards and restacks them in a deck. 

“I wanted to discuss how soon I can take trainees upstairs. I know we’ve been doing slow reintroductions in the other bunkers, but it’s just hard to teach much without hands-on training. We can talk about it later.”

“Okay. Well, it’s really Ray you have to convince,” Stevie deflects.

“I was hoping for reinforcements.” 

It’s a charming smile, and David feels badly for him. Stevie is immune to charm. 

“I know it’s your first day here, but I have a feeling we may have different approaches to work,” Stevie replies dryly.

“I gathered that by the, ah, deck of cards,” Patrick snarks. That gets her attention. David’s too. 

David studies Patrick while Stevie lets him describe his philosophy on reentry timelines. He has pale skin and curly hair that’s just a little shaggy, more like he’s past-due for a cut than intentionally wearing it long. He looks like someone who in the old world you’d find coaching a youth soccer team, like he’d be the kind of guy fulfilled by that. But the breakdown on the ramp, the scar, living upstairs full-time . . . He’s more complex than he looks, and David wants to figure him out. 

David doesn’t know what life is like upstairs. He has heard various stories of fire and famine and a permanently smoky sky. Naturally, it’s a popular source of speculation in the silo. But Stevie is the only person he knows who’s actually been out of the silo, and she won’t say what she’s seen. He wonders if the stories about upstairs have been conflated down here so everyone can pat themselves on the back for a choice well made. It’s not that things are particularly luxurious anymore with the rations, but at least they are safe and breathing clean air. 

“You want to join us for dinner?” David hears Stevie ask. 

“That’s okay. I’ll eat when I get home.”

“What, do you have something against anemic fish and soggy greens?” David asks. 

“Oh no, it’s just that seafood feels a little too fancy for a weeknight,” Patrick replies through a hint of a grin. “Wednesday is usually baked beans straight from the can for me.”

“Yum,” David says in a way that means the opposite. “You know canned foods are laced with BPA.” He doesn’t even know if that’s true. It’s detritus from his old life still lodged in his brain.

“Well you know what they say, David, if the apocalypse won’t get you, the BPA will.”

“I guess we’re doomed either way then,” David says. 

Patrick smiles, quick and bright like an arcing electrical current. No one jokes at all anymore, much less about the event that caused the old world to shatter into the new. David apparently has some kind of kink for people who can be flippant about their circumstances. It’s what first drew him to Stevie, and it’s definitely doing something for David now talking to Patrick. 

“I thought we were going to dinner?” Stevie can’t help but insert. She’d made no effort to hide her mouth as it dropped open into a little “o” while they volleyed.

“We are,” David says, but he doesn’t turn to leave. “You sure you don’t want to come? Stevie’s buying.”

“I’m sure. It’s just I hear it’s a nice place, and I forgot my dinner jacket, and I’d hate to have to wear one of theirs.”

“You know I’ve probably got something you can borrow if you’re worried this camping chic ensemble is too casual.” 

“I’m sorry, are you mocking my clothes?” Patrick asks. David feels so good to be a little less serious for a fucking minute that he forgets to hide his smile.

Patrick is smiling for real now too. Almost. It looks like a smile but the corners of his mouth are curiously turned down. Like everything else about him, it’s a contradiction. 

“Well I’m going to eat,” Stevie says, elbowing David. He realizes he’s been staring. 

“Maybe I’ll see you around, David,” Patrick says. 

“See you around,” David agrees. He turns towards Stevie but looks back, just briefly, and their eyes meet. Patrick gives the faintest of nods, just like he did on the ramp, and turns to go back down the hall the way he came. If Stevie notices David linger to watch him leave, she doesn’t say.

\-----

Patrick places his forehead against the cool metal surface of the desk again. The silos make him hot and raise his heart rate. Or maybe it’s David. He’s not sure how long they talked but he could have gone on like that for hours, enjoying the way David’s face changed like quicksilver through every back-and-forth. His voice is dynamic. He has a way of moving that’s lyrical. Patrick feels like he could watch him do something as simple as walk across the room and sit down in a chair and it would be beautiful.

Patrick’s life upstairs is hard. He knows that. He’s lucky, still, because he has everything he needs. But now, presented with a person who is so many things he doesn’t need and yet so many things he desperately wants . . . There’s nothing about David that is practical or beneficial or that will help him survive. Except now he doesn’t understand how he’s survived at all without this feeling. _ Fuck. _His heart is pounding.

“Knock-knock!” a cheerful voice says, swinging open the door, interrupting his thoughts.

“Ray,” Patrick says, surprised, sitting up. “I didn’t know you were planning to stop in.”

“I had to come say hello on your big first day!”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Ray’s smile fades as he closes the door to Patrick’s office. 

“I know you are just getting settled, but we need to sit down and talk through the new reentry protocol. Will you have time tomorrow?” His voice drops an octave; most of his accent drops with it.

It still gives Patrick chills sometimes when Ray stops talking in exclamation points. It’s something he only does around people who are well acquainted with his shrewd, calculating mind. 

“I was planning to set up the Training Center, but I’ll stop by before,” Patrick says.

“Very good. We’ll get it straightened out.”

Ray starts to leave but stops, hand on the door handle. 

“I know you find it difficult to be down here,” Ray adds quietly. “Thank you for agreeing to this assignment.”

“Ah, sure. Of course. Just happy to help, Ray.” It’s true enough. 

Ray nods, adopts his aw-shucks posture, and leaves the office without closing the door. 

Patrick just shakes his head. Patrick has been doing whatever Ray Butani needs for five years, enough time to be enormously fond of him and perpetually exasperated with him in equal measure. They’ve been through a lot together.

For decades, each of Ray’s new business ventures were met with eye rolls by the business community. Eight years ago, when he announced he was entering the doomsday market, Ray’s colleagues roared with laughter. Then the world started burning, and Ray’s little bunker enterprise became the last refuge of the wealthy families who could afford his opportunistic pricing. Ray was the only one still laughing as he happily took their fortunes. Now, the falsely cheerful Ray Butani is a benevolent dictator protecting the lives of almost six hundred people who mocked his vision. Luckily—or sometimes unluckily, Patrick thinks as he scratches idly over the scar up his right arm—he’s Ray’s right hand man.

\-----

“So how does one get on this reentry train?” David asks, sitting down with Stevie in the cafeteria, an array of hard surfaces on Tier 1 under a shallow geodesic dome that spans the center of the silo roof. The bombproof plexiglass panels are hazy, or maybe it’s still the sky, but it is the closest thing to the feeling of outside they can get. Around them, leafy crops reach for the stingy light through holes in a hydroponic tube system mounted above fish tanks embedded in the floor. It’s supposed to give the whole area a garden patio setting. David has always thought it in poor taste that people who are forced to eat the same basic diet several times a week have to consume said diet surrounded by its living counterparts, but there’s a lot about the silo that misses the mark in the taste department.

“Well, for starters, one has life skills that might benefit other people,” Stevie says pointedly. He adores her. She’s the only person who doesn’t tiptoe around the bunker like people might shatter if you act normally around them. One of two people now, he amends, thinking of Patrick.

“I have life skills,” David insists, eyes shifting sideways.

“You do? Enlighten me,” she says. 

“I have . . . an excellent sense of direction.”

“Oh, well in that case let me go get you an application.”

“I mean, isn’t the whole point of that guy’s job to help people learn skills?”

“That guy?” Stevie asks. “You mean Patrick?” She says it with a sharp “k” sound, like she means to shoot his name right under David’s skin. 

“Yes, Patrick. The Reentry Coordinator.” He waves his name away with his hand like he didn’t just spend the last half hour thinking about his mouth. Or his hands. 

She gives him one of her looks, like he’s made of water, transparent and easily rippled.

“Pretty much every job upstairs involves getting very dirty or breaking a sweat, usually both. I’m not sure they are skills you’d be interested in learning.”

“Are you implying that I can’t get dirty or break a sweat? Because I’ll have you know that I once ran—”

“David.” She stops him. “You know I love you, but trust me. It’s not the world you remember.”

“So what am I supposed to do, just live in this silo forever?” he asks.

She shrugs.

“Not forever, but long enough for things to get easier up there. And you can’t beat the food.” The bite of tilapia she chews is so wrong-textured it crunches audibly, an ironic period at the end of her sentence. 

He tries hard not to be offended. She’s probably right. He has no business being upstairs. Especially if the only reason he wants to go upstairs right now is to spend more time with Patrick Brewer.

\----

Stevie’s right, he thinks. David wouldn’t make it thirty seconds upstairs, life skills or not. She’s definitely right. So naturally, two days later, he’s loitering outside Patrick’s office hoping to get a second opinion.

“David?” Patrick calls from behind him. He is coming up the ramp, and there’s nowhere to hide. David can hardly pretend he is just admiring the paint color. 

“Um, hi,” David says with a tight wave. 

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Patrick jokes. 

“Ha, yeah,” he replies nervously. “Um, so how are you today?”

“Other than being trapped in a bunker, I can’t complain,” Patrick replies, droll. 

“I think the word you’re looking for is entombed,” David says. 

Patrick lets out a quick bark of a laugh, surprising them both. David wonders if he’s the first person Patrick has encountered who thinks his dark sense of humor is funny. 

“Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you knocked that day,” Patrick says. “It wasn’t very professional of me. I just needed a minute alone.”

“It’s fine,” David says, waving it off. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but we’re in the middle of a global catastrophe. You’re allowed to take a minute for yourself when you need it.”

“Thank you, David.” Patrick looks at him for a minute, hand paused on the door lever, a small smile on his face like he is looking at him anew.

“Anyway what brings you to Tier 2 today?” Patrick asks, walking into his office and holding the door with a gesture inviting David in. It takes David a minute to follow. Patrick moves with such purpose, even over short distances, it’s striking.

“Um, I was thinking about the reentry team,” David says, scratching the side of his jaw nervously. “And I was wondering if I could get some ideas on what you’re looking for and . . . maybe fill out an application.”

Patrick grins. It is that upside down grin again, and David’s stomach turns with it.

“Y-yeah. Let’s fill out an application,” Patrick says, sitting down and taking a clipboard out of a drawer. He leans back in his chair so David can’t see what he is writing. “We’ll start with a brief description of your skills.”

“Um, well, I have an excellent sense of direction,” David says.

“Okay, that might be useful.” He puts his hand to his chin like he is trying to hold his face in a businesslike expression, though, so it’s probably not that useful.

“Um . . . I used to do the annual hunt at Elton John’s,” David adds tentatively. 

“Good. Hunting is very useful, David,” Patrick says. It must be, because this time he clicks the end of the retractable pen and makes a note. 

“Um. I did Coachella every year before we moved here.”

“Huh,” Patrick says. He’s grinning fully now, not trying to hide it. He clearly thinks David is either deranged or delightful. It’s not clear which. 

It seems to David like every conversation with Patrick is really two conversations. There are the words he says aloud, which may or may not come with a friendly bite. There are also the words he almost says, the ones that seem to hang on his tongue as he listens, filtered at the last minute so they are only communicated with his eyes and his almost-smile—and only if you’re paying close attention. David is paying close attention.

“Never mind. That’s probably not relevant,” David reconsiders. “And, um, actually, the thing at Elton John’s was more about the lunch.” 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Patrick asks, his eyes sharp, tapping the tip of the pen against the clipboard. 

“Um, okay . . .”

“We need people upstairs. The only thing you really need is willingness to learn. I actually only have one other applicant so far . . . Twyla Sands. For her skills, she said storytelling, tarot reading, and party planning.”

“Well, those do sound very important,” David says with a reluctant grin. Patrick chuckles. 

Patrick makes a few more notes. David watches the way his hand moves decisively across the paper, the tightening of muscles in his forearm as he writes.

Patrick finishes his notes and clicks his pen, setting it on the desk.

“So we’ll start next Monday, if that works for you.”

“Um, what will we do up there, exactly? Upstairs, that is.”

“Right now, we’re working on setting up small farms, establishing livestock populations. If that doesn’t appeal to you, there’s also a crew shoring up buildings to make them habitable. We have people working on establishing systems like wind-generated power and water filtration, but those are mostly in the planning stages. A few people are working on a regional trade network. There’s a few other odd jobs.”

“Oh.” None of those sound remotely in David’s wheelhouse. “Can I ask what it’s like?”

Patrick sighs and studies the paper in front of him. According to Stevie, those who live downstairs must be shielded from the truth of what is upstairs until they are ready to hear it. Apparently Patrick can’t bring himself to lie to David, even to shield him. 

“It’s terrifying when you first see it,” Patrick says frankly. “It’s just—”

“Actually, maybe you shouldn’t answer that,” David says.

Patrick doesn’t seem to be able to stop himself.

“The trees and plants are starting to come back now, so it’s not gray and brown like it used to be, but . . . it’s not colorful like it was before either. The light feels wrong—like it’s always a winter day at four o’clock. But it’s hot, usually. Perpetually summer. The air feels . . . close? I guess is the word. When we go into town, you’ll see it’s— Well it’s like people just took anything that they could carry and disappeared one day. Everything is unnervingly quiet. There are birds and other animals that survived, but you don’t hear them like you used to. There’s almost never wind to rustle the trees, except for when it comes in a big gale and then you have to take cover.”

“Is it too late to back out of this, because I’m not— Um . . .” David trails off. David has no idea if he is ready to be confronted with real evidence that the world he remembers exists only there in his memory. 

“David, you can drop out at any point,” Patrick assures him. He leans forward, earnest, like he needs David to understand. “There’s no obligation here.”

“Okay,” David says quietly, studying his hands.

“There is one good thing about upstairs. The food is significantly better.”

“Unless there’s pizza or something, I doubt it’s enough better to be a selling point.”

“Well, it’s not like you remember, but there is pizza. It has goat cheese. The sauce is basically cooked, mashed tomatoes, and the crust is really more like a cracker. But it’s better than the seafood special you get down here.”

“Oh,” David says, surprised.

“And for what it’s worth, I think you’ll be fine. If it helps to look forward to something . . . Your first night upstairs, I’ll make you a new world pizza.” 

Patrick unclips the paper and slides it across the desk. There is no form, just a hasty sketch of a pizza, a circle divided into wedges with chicken-scratched toppings. Underneath, are written three letters: I.O.U.

David studies it, dipping his head to hide his smile at the rough drawing. Patrick hasn’t written anything for a few minutes, which means he drew it before David mentioned pizza at all.

“Does this mean I have to fill out my own application?” David asks.

“No. No application. Reentry is about building a better world, David. And in my version of a better world, I think we shouldn’t have to fill out paperwork to change our lives. So . . . will I see you Monday?” 

David pauses and looks at Patrick. He wants to know more about him. He wants to see more of him, too.

“Well at the moment I’m oscillating? So it’s possible I will lock myself in my room and never come out? But yes. If I can’t talk myself out of this before then, you’ll see me Monday,” he says softly.

“Good,” Patrick says.

\-----

David trails his hand against the smooth concrete surface of the silo wall on his way back down the ramp from Patrick’s office, thinking about their conversation about upstairs. _It’s terrifying when you first see it,_ Patrick had said. David closes his eyes, putting one foot and then the other on the concrete. He imagines he is walking on the road his family took to get to the silo their last day upstairs. He tries to picture the dull light, the gray-green trees, the warm air closing around him. He tries to focus on the silence, on the tap-scrape pulse of his rubber soles on the pavement. He imagines walking as far as his legs will take him. 

Tier 7 is one more turn of the ramp away when suddenly it is all too much. David stops, bracing himself with his hand on the wall. His other hand crunches the I.O.U. in his fist as he tries to cling to the image of the desolate road from his mind. He hastily flattens the drawing again. He wants the road, he realizes. The silence, the stillness. The freedom. Patrick too, maybe.

All of it. 

He didn’t even realize how badly he wanted to be free of this place until he sat down in Patrick’s office. 

It’s all he can do to keep himself going down. He wants to turn and run. He wants to run up the ramp until he breaks through the last door between this manufactured reality below and the real, raw light above. 

He does turn, looking back up the ramp, and whispers a brand new thought to himself.

“I can leave if I want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The show exists in a world that is realistic in many ways, but idealistic in many others. Ultimately, that’s where I tried to land here with this AU. Also, I’m leaning into SC perpetual summer.
> 
> I started writing this in May, before any of the other fluffier stuff I posted last summer. By the time the fires in the Amazon became international news, this was nearly complete. I decided to leave it, because fire is a Running Theme, but it was not intended to hit quite so close to home.
> 
> Last year, I attended a presentation by the filmmaker of _The Babushkas of Chernobyl,_ who follows a group of women who decided to return to their homes in the exclusion zone after the Chernobyl disaster instead of evacuating, risking their own health, safety, and comfort to do so. For some reason, my brain mashed that up with Schitt's Creek (obviously minus the dire and real ramifications of that disaster). So this is my effort to process that mostly for myself. 
> 
> I spent way too much time researching things like “silicon valley doomsday bunker” to craft the “downstairs” world in this story. I picked and chose details from many sources to build the bunker, determine how it was organized, how the occupants share duties and responsibilities. Which is to say, every bunker-related detail in this story is pulled from somewhere real, but they are remixed into an imaginary world. I took some creative license with the architecture, although many of these bunkers are being constructed in former missile silos. I hope you’ll forgive any world-building omissions or shortcuts and attribute them to the real humans in my life who are sometimes a little needier than the ones in my head. 
> 
> The characters in this story will make decisions that are not directly “in character” with the show, even in similar situations. They’ve been through some shit. They act more impulsively, they’re uncharacteristically direct sometimes, and, in some ways, they’re less cautious. That said, I hope you still see the people you love.


	2. Take these broken wings and learn to fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: The characters will (in a vague and brief way) learn how to fire rifles in this chapter. The purpose of this training will be explicitly stated as learning to hunt. On the show David shoots a turkey with a hunting rifle so I felt it was reasonable to include without ruffling too many feathers (sorry Ted lives in my brain too, and he can’t be stopped). Person-to-person violence is not part of this story. That’s not to say it isn’t part of this world – I have left it open for you to make your own decisions on that.

“So David, I don’t get it . . . is it like a class or something?” Alexis asks. 

David is sitting on the couch tying a pair of high top sneakers. He’s not really sure what one is supposed to wear to a firing range.

“I’m training to go upstairs,” David says down to his feet, hoping she’ll tune him out as usual.

“Oh my god, David,” she says sharply.

“What? What is it?” his dad asks, coming through the door that joins their chambers. 

David was supposed to have this space to himself. Then Alexis got dumped after her shipping heir fiancé decided he couldn’t see a future underground with her. Now he has to share his room. As if that wasn’t enough, the door between his chamber and his parents’ hangs crookedly so the latch does not properly engage. Stevie says it’s on a list of things to fix but, “everyone is a little preoccupied with surviving right now, David.” So it has been four years without a minute of guaranteed fucking peace. It’s no longer a shock to have someone intrude on his private space, but he doesn’t think he will ever really get used to it. 

“David is training for reentry,” Alexis says, perching next to him on the couch and nudging David’s arm with her elbow.

“You are? Well that’s exciting, son,” Johnny says. 

“Is it?”

“Yes. Very exciting.”

“You’re so brave, David,” Alexis says, laying it on thick with a little squint. 

“You are. You really are. I’m proud of you,” Johnny says. 

Drawn by his father’s enthusiasm, his mother comes in, fastening a cuff to her wrist.

“Which child are we delighted with this time, dear?” Moira asks, because really everyone might as well join him as he finishes getting dressed.

“David’s going upstairs,” Alexis says, alternating her shoulders back and forth.

“Whatever for?” Moira asks.

“They need help,” David says, trying not to let his other reasons flit across his face. In four years, they’ve all become far too adept at reading one another.

“They indubitably need assistance if they’ve recruited you, David,” Moira says, exchanging a look of concern with his father.

“Well I think it’s a great idea. You’ll never know if you don’t try, son,” Johnny says, more to his mom than to him.

“Okay, you know what, everything will be fine. I’m not even sure I’m going. I’m just going to do the training for a week and see what I think. If nothing else it will get me out of chore rotation.” 

“Oh, is it our week for that again, John?” Moira asks, already pouting. 

“I’m afraid so, dear,” Johnny says, rubbing her back to soothe her.

About once every three months, one family in the bunker is responsible for a range of chores. It was that or give up precious space and resources to staff. This week, the Rose family will be responsible for collecting trash, cleaning the common areas, cycling the facility laundry, and other miscellaneous tasks. It puts them all on edge when it is their week. 

“And we should probably get started, Moira, or we won’t finish by dinner,” Johnny adds, steering her back to their chamber.

“David, maybe I could join the reentry team,” Alexis says, like she’s just been struck with inspiration. He had forgotten he wasn’t going to tell her his secret for dodging chores. 

“It’s a pretty rigorous application process,” David says, smiling at his shoe. He kept Patrick’s sketch of a pizza, using it to mark the spot in his book. “I’m not sure you’d make it through.”

“Um, I think if you did, David, how hard can it be? I’ll just come along today and talk them into letting me join,” Alexis says. 

As much as David doesn’t want to spend the day with Twyla and Alexis, he knows she misses adventure down here in the silo.

“Fine,” David says. It’s not like he can imply she has something better to do. Especially when it’s their week for chores.

“Oh yay, David!” she says, hopping excitedly and clapping her hands soundlessly. “This is going to be so fun for us.”

David waits patiently for her to gather her purse—she never actually needs it down here but they all have habits they cling to—and to strap on her shoes.

David and Alexis climb the ramp and cross through a barrel-vaulted tunnel accessed between Tiers 2 and 3. The firing range is in a three-story extension to the silo they call the Cube. It’s connected through another tunnel to Bunker 14. It used to be the control room housing servers for the missile silos when there was an active missile inside it. Now the Cube is home to all the workout and practical training spaces, including the gym, putting green, rock-climbing wall, pool (turned skateboard ramp due to water rations), and here, in front of them, the firing range. 

It’s a cool gray space with glass partitions separating a couple of counters facing targets at the other end of the room. There’s a pulley system above each separate booth to attach the target and change its distance. David is happy to see the targets are just circles with concentric rings and not evoking anything specific.

Patrick and Twyla are already in one of the booths, Patrick gently adjusting and instructing. 

_ Exciting_, his father had said. And it is. David is excited. He’s having some trouble parsing out how much of that is the idea of leaving this place and how much is Patrick. But Patrick is definitely part of it. David is struck, again, by the way he moves. It’s purposeful. There’s speed and power behind it, even when he’s not moving quickly. Yet his touch is almost always soft. Another contradiction.

David is not exactly sure how Twyla ended up in the bunker among otherwise wealthy families. It has something to do with one of her relatives and a favor owed by Ray. Twyla is wearing goggles and noise-canceling headphones and pointing a rifle at the target. Twyla pulls the trigger and a small hole appears in the paper just outside the circle. 

“That’s not bad. Not bad at all for a beginner,” Patrick says, genuinely encouraging. 

Alexis, impatient, starts her flirty prance up behind them, ready to make her case.

“Uh-oh, hang on, I need everyone to stay back behind the line,” Patrick says kindly, pointing to a yellow stripe on the floor and moving her back behind it, a hand on the outside of each shoulder. 

David considers getting too close to the line too, just to see if he can get the same result. 

“Oops, sorry. Just so excited to get started,” Alexis says.

Patrick gives David a questioning look. David tries to convey this was _ not _ his idea. Patrick’s mouth quivers a little and David’s echoes it. He's starting to get a buzzy feeling whenever he sees his thoughts reflected back to him in Patrick's face.

“Anyway, I’m Alexis, David’s sister and life coach. David told me about the classes he’s taking and I thought I’d tag along.”

“Okay. Are you interested in doing reentry training?” Patrick asks.

“Of course,” Alexis lies boldly, tapping Patrick’s chest lightly with her finger. Patrick takes a subtle step back. 

“Okay, well we’re waiting for one more person but let’s get started with rifle training,” Patrick says.

“Hey. Sorry, I’m late.” 

David turns towards the voice, but he doesn’t need to see who it is to know who it belongs to. That voice is burned in his brain. _Fuck._

“David?” Jake says, looking more than surprised to see him here.

“Hey. Hi,” David tries to bend himself in half vertically by folding his shoulders forward as Jake leans down and kisses David softly on the lips. Patrick stares at them, dumbfounded.

“Good to see you again,” David says. “Seems like it’s been what, a couple years since . . . uh—”

“Yeah. Stevie and I were disappointed when you broke up with us,” Jake says. 

Well, David thinks, this is a situation that is pure and truly fucked.

“Oh my god, David. You didn’t tell me Stevie is the reason you broke it off with Jake,” Alexis says, like she has new gleeful appreciation for the debacle that whole situation turned out to be. 

“Okay. _First_,” David starts, more to Jake than Alexis, “there was no relationship to break off as you well know. _Second_,” he turns to Patrick, “I was really looking forward to learning about firearms. So.” 

Patrick’s face is unreadable, which David finds surprising. He has found Patrick to be pretty transparent so far. If Patrick can drop a mask in front of his eyes when he wants to, that means he hasn’t wanted to. Until now. Until fucking Jake. Patrick takes over, a little more coolly than before. 

David does his best to listen. And he finds, once he gets to try it, that it is sort of fun to shoot one of the rifles. Or maybe he’s just enjoying the way Patrick hovers close, pressing a light hand to his shoulder or elbow to correct his position. His hands are warm and firm, and David feels like each adjustment loosens his hold on his desires, his body longing for more. David tries not to be disappointed with the way Patrick adjusts the position of each of the other trainees the same way he does with David. 

\-----

A week later, David taps nervously on the table during their first day in the Training Center. Despite its auspicious name, the Training Center is really a utilitarian room on Tier 3 with a concrete floor, a few work surfaces, and banks of maple storage cabinets along two walls. On a chalkboard in the front, Patrick has outlined the steps they’ll be taking to plant seedlings. Above it, he has written a quote from Rudyard Kipling about gardens. 

“Okay, so down here we’re going to make our seed starters out of toilet paper tubes. Upstairs, we typically use egg shells. Both work just fine.”

They’re standing around a table with large tubs. David recognizes some of the labels, like compost and peat, while others are completely foreign. Patrick hands out the cardboard tubes and walks them through cutting them and folding the ends in to make small cardboard cups. Then he explains the proper soil mixture. 

Not for the first time, David gets a little lost listening to Patrick talk. It has nothing to do with Patrick’s teaching style. He’s good at giving them information in digestible amounts, so they can absorb what they absolutely need to know without being overwhelmed with specifics until they are ready. He’s patient and kind and seems to know how to stay in the space between excessive placation and demoralizing honesty. All of Patrick’s lessons have been surprisingly enjoyable—at least in the hypothetical. Right now life upstairs remains a vague and vaguely exciting notion. It seems less exciting when he thinks of all of these lessons becoming tasks he has to do every day just to survive.

“David." Alexis says under her breath, elbowing him.

“Ow! What?” David realizes that in watching and studying Patrick he’s forgotten to follow along. Everyone else has filled their cups from the bins. David tries to catch up, forgetting to check the board for the instructions. 

“You know what, that’s not bad, David, especially since you haven’t done this before. But I think your seedlings will be happier if you mix the ingredients up first. Why don’t we come back when we’re finished today and I’ll show you,” Patrick says. 

“Oh, okay,” David says. He's not sure it's complicated enough for a lesson after class but he's not going to say no to more time with Patrick.

"Yeah, David. It's really important to make sure you only have the fine compost, otherwise—” 

"That's exactly right about compost, Alexis," Patrick interjects deftly. "Okay, let's move on to planting.”

\-----

Once their seeds are positioned in trays under the grow lights, they return to the firing range. 

“Twyla and I have a question,” Alexis says as Patrick passes out ear protection. 

“Yes, Alexis?” Patrick asks, summoning his patience.

“What exactly are we doing with the guns once we’re upstairs?” Alexis asks

“Hunting,” Patrick says. Had he forgotten to mention that?

“Oh good,” Twyla says, her whole body sighing from her shoulders down. “I was worried we were doing combat training or something.”

“Nope. No,” Patrick says, shaking his head. He considers making a joke about what a sorry state the world would be in if the four of them were his best hope for defense, but right now it’s more important to keep morale high. “This is a part of life upstairs. Everyone at least needs to know how to handle a rifle safely.”

Patrick moves back and forth between the trainees, trying to give everyone the same attention. Well perhaps he gives Jake a little less attention, but Jake already knows how to hunt with a rifle. He tells himself it has nothing to do with the way Jake made his entrance the previous week. 

In the world upstairs, Patrick has grown used to the relentless march of shock, which is to say he has learned to rank emotions in order according to which he has the most time and energy to deal with in any given moment. That’s what he has been trying to do about the way his stomach dropped when Jake kissed David, when Jake looked at David and spoke to David like a missed opportunity. Patrick thinks he managed to compartmentalize it well enough—he was able to continue with the training at least—but he can’t seem to stop thinking about what it might be like to walk up to David and kiss him like that. Like his mouth is soft and familiar.

Whenever they practice on the firing range, Patrick finds it’s getting harder not to linger in David’s scent. He smells distinct, like cloves maybe or nutmeg and vaguely minty. It’s natural, but not the kind of nature that Patrick is used to upstairs. As he stands close, pleased with the progress David is making, he tries not to let his hands make unnecessary adjustments. David does actually need to learn how to do this. He can’t reposition David just as an excuse to touch him again. Much as he might want to.

\-----

Two weeks later, David lingers in the Training Center to help Patrick clean up the iodine tablets and filters they used for today’s lesson. The rest of the reentry trainees have gone. So far, David has been introduced to rifle hunting, building a fire, planting seedlings, purifying water for drinking, and navigating by compass. Patrick likes to focus on different things each day and then circle back to them several times, rather than mastering one thing at a time. It breaks up the monotony, he says, and also gives them time to practice on their own in between. David doesn’t think any of them are actually practicing on their own—he’s certainly not—but it’s a nice plan.

More than anything else they’re learning, David has enjoyed being introduced to Patrick Brewer. David has never really been attracted to someone who looks and dresses like they belong in an L.L. Bean catalog, but he never realized how good that type of person can be with their hands either. Watching Patrick’s hands build a fire for the first time, competent and practiced, is one of the more beautiful things David has seen since coming downstairs. It’s not hard for his affection-starved brain to make the leap that Patrick’s hands might be good at other activities too.

Today though, cleaning up the water purification supplies, David has been quiet.

“Would you mind erasing the chalkboard?” Patrick asks.

“Did Benjamin Franklin really say this?” David swipes the eraser over the words: _ In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria. _

“Probably not. Bacteria wasn’t really a word in usage during his time.”

“What made you start using the quotes?” David asks, curious. Patrick usually writes a quote on the chalkboard in the Training Center on the theme of the day’s lesson.

“I think I get self-conscious, honestly. I wasn’t a teacher, before. I feel a little unqualified and the quotes are sort of like backup. Like if I have nothing interesting to say, at least someone else does.”

“What did you do before?” David asks, pausing the eraser and turning back to Patrick.

“I did grant-writing for businesses. That’s how I got connected with Ray. The government was offering grants toward new uses for silos if people would take them off their hands.”

“Oh. So not a lot of fire building in that line of work?” David asks. Patrick laughs, a break in his professional demeanor that just _ does things _ to David. 

“Not much, no. Put out fires sometimes, but they were, uh, metaphorical. It was surprisingly light on celestial navigation and plant identification too, which I always found disappointing.”

“You know as a food and lifestyle writer, I’m feeling like I missed out on iodine-flavored water. That could have really taken the New York food scene by storm,” David says wryly, still tasting it in his mouth.

“Yes, that seems like it would be just pretentious enough,” Patrick agrees.

“Well you eat beans from a can, so,” David says. 

“What would I know?” Patrick finishes for him, smiling as he closes up a box of supplies. 

“How long does the taste stay in your mouth?” David asks a minute later, still thinking about it as he swirls his tongue around his teeth uncomfortably.

“You get used to it eventually,” Patrick says, a touch apologetically. “I have mint in my garden that I use to calm the flavor a bit at home.” 

“You have a garden?” David asks. 

Patrick moves past him to put the box of supplies away, touching briefly to his shoulder to squeeze between him and the cabinets. David moves just enough to let him through, enjoying the way his body slides past.

“Yeah. Everyone has a garden. I told you the food was better up there.”

“You did. Judging by how brown my little plant is looking at home, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to partake in better food if growing it is up to me.”

“You’re doing great for a beginner, David. Really.” David turns sharply when he hears that word again, _beginner_. Patrick says that at least three times a day. _ Pretty good for a beginner. Not bad for a beginner. That’s great for a beginner. _It’s meant to be encouraging but . . .

“I think you mean that nicely, but you should know it doesn’t exactly boost my confidence when you qualify how I’m doing with ‘for a beginner,’” David says.

“Well it’s true,” Patrick shrugs.

“Still not helping.”

“Okay. Noted.” They smile at each other for a moment. Patrick’s smile widens as David’s twists sideways. David turns back to the chalkboard and erases Benjamin Franklin’s name.

“It’s kind of nice, thinking about him. Franklin.”

“Oh?” Patrick asks, not following.

“Yeah, I mean it’s like a thread connecting us to this other time where people wanted to—I don’t know, redefine the world, I guess. That's not it exactly. Anyway, it’s nice.” David feels his face flush. He usually saves embarrassing thoughts like that for his notebook at night.

“Hm,” Patrick says, picking up two pitchers. David hasn’t seen this kind of smile on Patrick yet. It’s softer, more introspective.

“Maybe that’s stupid,” David says, backpedaling. “There’s too much time to think down here.”

“It’s not stupid,” Patrick says, stacking the pitchers together in one hand and touching David briefly on the arm with his other. “It’s nice.”

“Oh,” David says. 

They are standing close, hands full of filters and pitchers, smiling again, one gentle, one twisted. 

“Maybe you’ll be the next Ben Franklin,” David says.

“Probably not,” Patrick says. “I’m not eccentric enough. You would be a better Ben Franklin.”

“See you said that like it was meant to be something nice, but really what you did is call me eccentric, and I don’t think you meant that as a compliment.”

“I did mean it as a compliment, actually. The great thing about upstairs is you can be whatever you want to be. And if who you want to be is the next Ben Franklin, then I’m here to help.” 

David really doesn’t know how Patrick manages to continually use sarcasm in a way that comes off as charming.

“Well this really took a turn,” David says, making a crooked face. Patrick has obviously spent too much time with him to fall for it. His grin just widens, unapologetic.

“Well whatever you decide to be, thanks for helping me clean up, David,” Patrick says.

David likes the way Patrick handles his name, always saying it with a certain care, like his mouth might be just as skilled as his hands.

“You’re welcome, Patrick,” he says, seeing if it works both ways. Based on Patrick’s face, it does.

Patrick’s look turns soft, and David feels like he’s dangerously close to touching him on purpose, maybe more than touching him. Patrick clears his throat and hastily turns to put the pitchers away before David has a chance to try anything.

“See you tomorrow?” Patrick asks. 

“Yeah. Or actually no. I thought we didn’t meet up on Saturdays.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Patrick says. “You know I could come by and investigate these allegedly brown seedlings.”

As David considers that offer, they are interrupted by a recorded PA announcement.

“Attention residents and staff. A category four storm is approaching. All persons should return to their chambers and remain there until you have received notification that the storm has cleared.”

“Fuck,” Patrick growls. It startles David. The swear seems violently out of character.

“Hey, it’s just a storm.”

“No, it’s just . . . It will be at least a few hours. There’s no way I’m going home tonight.”

“Oh. Sorry?” Patrick seems nearly panicked, but David doesn’t understand why. He’s not sure what Patrick’s living situation is upstairs, but he knows the bunker is probably more comfortable. Plus, there is running, pre-filtered water.

“Sorry. I just— I feel trapped when I’m downstairs. Can’t relax. Can’t sleep.”

“Oh. Has this happened before?”

“A couple times in other silos. I usually have a good handle on the weather but I stayed way longer than I was intending to today.”

“Oh. I didn't mean to keep you,” David says.

“Hey, David, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” He reaches towards David, his hand pausing for a moment before it decides tentatively on David’s forearm. 

“It’s fine.”

“No, I really didn’t mean it like that. I like talking to you. Always. It’s the best part of my day. I just don’t sleep well down here.” 

David tries not to get lost in _ best part of my day _ and tries to focus instead on nursing the plan that is beginning to form at the edges of his consciousness. 

“Where do you stay when you end up down here?” David asks. Space in the bunker is at a premium. The systems and storage needs to keep everyone alive occupy most of the space, so that the space remaining for occupants is fairly tight. There aren’t extra chambers just sitting empty. 

“In the security guard barracks between the Cube and the garage. They have some fold-up cots. Sometimes the night guard will let me sleep in their bed while they are on duty, but since it’s Ronnie’s crew and she strongly dislikes me, that seems unlikely.”

“Oh,” is all David says. He wants to ask a follow-up but it doesn’t seem like talking about whatever this situation is with Ronnie will improve Patrick’s mood. David met Ronnie once or twice. She is Ray’s head of security, and intimidating as hell when she wants to be. David kind of admires that about her.

“Anyway, I should probably get there, and you should probably get to your chamber.”

“Actually when there’s a storm I go up to Tier 1. It’s fun to watch them through the dome.”

“I thought they said everyone should report to their chamber.”

“It’s not elementary school. If the dome is bombproof it should be stormproof too, right? Otherwise we’re all in trouble anyway.”

“Storms can be more powerful than bombs, David,” Patrick says.

He scratches lightly over his scar through his sleeve. David still isn’t sure if he can ask how he got it, but he’s noticed Patrick touches it reflexively when he forgets to be flippant about the world, when he allows himself to get a little anxious about it instead.

“Will you come watch it up there with me?” David asks. “I promise we can leave if it’s too much.”

Patrick studies him. He has noticed that Patrick tends to reflect whatever tone David sets. In this case, David’s sincerity is met with an open earnestness. 

“Okay. Let’s go.”

The Training Center is right off the stair in the light well, but David insists on the ramp. He hates having to hang to the side of the stair to let people pass, he explains when Patrick asks. The ramp terminates at Tier 1 near a little sectional sofa and chair grouping. Someone decided it should be outdoor furniture to go with the patio setting even though the people sitting on it might spend years without going outside. The back of the couch is hard and the cushion is covered in a scratchy waterproof fabric. As he sits down, David considers pontificating about all the ways the design of the bunker taunts its occupants on a daily basis. When he turns to Patrick, he completely forgets what he was going to say. 

Patrick is still standing a few feet to his left, his face lifted to the dome above, unnervingly still. The storm has already transformed the sky with great black clouds, plunging the space below in darkness except for the low-voltage path lighting. The rain starts pelting the glass, a series of plops and smacks that sound like fireworks. The lightning starts, and Patrick’s eyes seem to spark every time a sharp purple line cuts through the black. In the institutional light of the bunker Training Center, Patrick’s face is round and very cute. But in profile like this, his Adam’s apple protruding from his elongated neck, head tipped back in wonder, a lightning show dancing across his face, he is devastating. David’s understimulated cock twitches violently. 

“Upstairs, you don’t get to appreciate storms,” Patrick says. The rain has switched to silvery lashes, quieter against the glass but menacing all the same. David has to stand up so he can hear him. “I forgot what it’s like to be able to watch nature do this.”

“Do you have a place where you take cover?”

“Yeah. I live above an abandoned store. There’s a place in the basement that used to be a root cellar. It’s surrounded by brick walls. It’s not particularly dry during this kind of weather, but it’s safe.”

“That’s good. I’d probably be worried about you if you’d left when you wanted to.”

“Hmm,” is all Patrick says. He looks away from sky just enough to step towards David, like he wants the exact same vantage point, before looking back up. They stand and watch the sky rage on. 

\-----

Standing there, next to David, Patrick realizes that it’s the first time in the silo he hasn’t been counting the seconds until he can leave. Although, no, that’s not entirely accurate. It’s just the first time he has noticed that he’s not counting seconds. With David, he wants every second to stretch just a little longer, silo or no. There is so little Patrick is afraid of in this world anymore. It’s a list three items long: spending the night in a bunker, storms, and telling David Rose how he feels. Suddenly the first two don’t seem scary at all. And the third . . .

In a different world, the one that wasn't set on fire, Patrick would have flirted, teased David mercilessly, and stewed over how to make a move for weeks or longer. But he’s not in that world anymore. Patrick knows better than to rely on fate to give him the time he needs. So he goes for it. 

“I want to kiss you,” he blurts, turning his face away from the sky and toward David, who is somehow even more beautiful than the show above them. “I’ve never even kissed a guy before, but I want to kiss you so badly I— I should try to come up with better words. But it's all I can think about. How much I want to kiss you.”

“O-Okay,” David says, taken aback. Patrick remembers, perhaps too late, that the bunker isn’t like upstairs. People still tread lightly down here. People at least try to find the right words. Now, he wishes he had gone the flirting, teasing, slow-build route if only to delay the reaction now demanded by what he has just confessed.

“Anyway, since we’re spending time together training and— And whatever. Um. I figured I should come clean about it,” Patrick concludes feebly, turning back to the dome.

\-----

It takes David too long to adjust. He knows he should say something. Do something. It’s a startling declaration, yet one that comes with no expectation of reciprocation. _I want to kiss you_. David felt his body react vehemently, like it was the first exposure he'd had to the hot bright sun in years—and really it sort of is, dark sky above notwithstanding. His brain struggles to rein in a sudden desire to crush Patrick against him and give him everything he wants and then some.

“You can, if you want,” David says at last. When Patrick looks back at him, surprised, David bites down on a grin, his eyes alight. Patrick may not have the words David deserves, but his eyes are saying plenty. 

“What?” Patrick stalls.

“Kiss me. If you want.” It comes out more fiercely then he meant it, but he hardly cares. 

Patrick inhales sharply and glances at David’s lips. David leans in just enough to encourage him and Patrick crosses the rest of the space between them like a man starved. Patrick takes David’s face between his hands, takes his mouth with his. The kiss is rigid at first, but only briefly, and then their lips soften and sink into each other. David feels Patrick’s hands relax on his jaw, his fingers sliding into the soft hairs at the back of David’s head, his thumbs brushing against the ridge of David’s cheekbones. David slides his own hands up Patrick’s back, feeling the strength there that feeds those capable hands. 

It is David’s first real kiss of the new world. The first one that means something, anyway. It didn’t occur to him that it would make any difference, but it does. He would lose almost anything to be left with a kiss like this.

It’s over too soon, but Patrick stays there with his hands cupped around David’s face the way he does with the first flare of the fires he builds, trying to keep the flame burning so the rest of the kindling can ignite. Except David is already ablaze. Patrick’s eyes take a minute to find their focus, but once he is really looking at David, his mouth breaks into a bashful smile. 

“Hi,” he murmurs, his voice graveled. Patrick slides his hands down to David’s shoulders. He swallows hard, squeezes hard, like he needs them both to know this is not a dream.

“Hi,” David whispers. He kisses him again. Again. Long presses against his lips. He just has to, because, god, he wants to keep feeling like this, like he’s soaring through the air. Then he leans in, Patrick’s cheek pleasantly rough against his own, and murmurs in his ear.

“That was pretty good for a beginner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know there is probably not a big plexiglass dome on this bunker that is otherwise two feet of concrete. But I wrote the last scene of this chapter and the dome just had to be there. So let’s assume the floor of Tier 1 is two feet of reinforced concrete to protect the living areas below and give these guys their moment. The dome is a nod to R. Buckminster Fuller, who developed and patented the geodesic dome. One of the many purposes he envisioned for the dome was for survival and protection in the event of global degradation. His book _Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth_ hasn’t let go of me since I first read it many, many years ago. He is kind of an oddball and has a number of observations that I love, but to choose one that seems relevant to this story . . . “I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself.”


	3. All your life

“So this is Tier 7,” David says as they reach the landing on the ramp. His smile is comforting as Patrick’s eyes shift warily between the pair of maple doors. 

When David suggested he stay over, it seemed like a good way for Patrick to get a chance to explore this very new but deeply wanted shift between them. But with each successive turn of the ramp, he has become more tense. David has already explained that he shares space with Alexis, that this is a couch situation to save Patrick from a restless night on a cot, so he hopes David understands this isn’t about him. It’s probably not great for the ego to have the person you have just kissed for the first time—the first several times—shut down at the prospect of spending the night in the same room as you.

“Tier 7,” Patrick repeats, voice hollow. In truth, Patrick thinks a cot in the barracks, which are only about 20 feet below grade, would be far superior to spending the night on Tier 7, the deepest living units in the silo. But he is not about to pass up an opportunity for more time with David after that kiss. And anyway, this silo was intended to keep people safe from harm and has done a splendid job of it so far, so really there’s nothing to be afraid of. He knows he will never really believe that, that for him safe means more than just alive, but he repeats it over and over to himself as they spiral down. 

Alexis is on David the second he opens the door. David must be used to it because he falls right in step with her. 

“David, I’m glad you’re here. I know being up there for storms makes you feel all brave and— Oh, hi, Patrick,” Alexis says, noticing they have company. She gives David a look that is nowhere in the vicinity of subtle. 

“Okay if I crash on the couch tonight?” Patrick asks. “I didn’t get home before the storm started.”

“You can sleep wherever you’re most comfortable,” Alexis says, smiling the same way David does when he is trying to keep himself from making the obvious comment, her lips between her teeth, eyebrows raised. 

David glares at her. Patrick marvels at the similarities.

Patrick tunes out of the specifics as they continue that way, barbing back and forth in a little whirlwind of sibling love-hate while David moves to his bed at the far end of the space and takes off his shoes. Patrick had his own chamber once in Bunker 8, but it wasn’t as nice as this. The finishes are high end and modern, with a light color palette that tries to make up for being deep below ground. There is a well-worn leather couch, a couple of sleek linen upholstered chairs, and a small round table with industrial steel legs. The warm wood bed is large, with a pair of half-walls separating it from the rest of the space. Alexis’s bed is smaller and shoved into an alcove that was probably meant for a table or desk. 

_ Complicated interpersonal dynamics_, Patrick recalls from the family’s file, smiling at them, still arguing away. It’s amusing to watch them bicker about one thing while they have an entire side conversation with their eyes and faces. It takes his mind off of his own fears for a bit. 

“Ugh, fine, David,” Alexis says, giving up the argument before walking into the small bathroom. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

\-----

Free of the distraction of his sister, David turns to Patrick, who is still standing in the open door, tapping his knuckles against the frame. He definitely hasn’t forgotten, despite the flurry of Alexis’s greeting, that he wants to kiss Patrick again. He wants to take in every inch of Patrick with his hands, with his mouth. He wants to hear the story about the scar. He wants to learn every secret Patrick’s body can tell him, actually. He wants to feel Patrick’s hands everywhere on his body, drawing out secrets of their own—these hands that build fire and plant life and clean water and seem to always find true north. _ He wants. _

“Changing your mind?” David asks, trying for casual, trying to keep the wanting in check. 

“Not about the important stuff,” Patrick says, stepping inside and closing the door quietly behind him. His hand lingers on the handle, like he’s not sure he wants to be shut up in here. Down here.

“Can I get you something to eat?” David asks. 

All the chambers have a small kitchenette. The microwaves use too much wattage now that everyone is required to ration energy, but there is a single-burner hot plate and a small built-in icebox that residents can use to keep things for a few hours if they bring it down from the kitchen on Tier 1. 

David opens a sleek stone-gray cupboard, growls, and slams it shut.

“Alexis, did you eat all of my mixed nuts again?” 

She pokes her head out of the bathroom, face half-covered with white cream, hair in a messy knot on top of her head.

“Um, I’m not sure you can call it a mixed nuts when it’s half chocolate, David, but no, I didn’t touch your little nut mixture. Now leave me alone. I have a half hour left for this mask, and it won’t do what it’s supposed to do if I have to talk during it.”

Alexis disappears back in the bathroom. David glares at the door for a minute before turning back to Patrick.

“Okay, well since _ someone _ ate all my good food, I have canned lentils or a Cup of Noodles,” David says, surveying the only two remaining items in the cupboard. He needs to visit the commissary again if Patrick is going to be around more. Maybe he can even shove Alexis’s bed in his parents’ room for a night. He’s getting ahead of himself.

“I’m fine. I have a protein bar and an apple in my bag,” Patrick says.

David opens a few more empty cupboards. Then he hears Patrick’s words again in his head.

“Wait, an apple? Like dried?”

“Uh, no. From the orchard.”

“I’m eating farmed fish and limp greens every day and there’s a fucking orchard upstairs?” David asks, lip curling. 

“Um, yes?” Patrick says. “I did tell you the food was better.”

“Why don’t I know about this?”

“Would it have made the food down here taste better if you did?” 

_ No, no it would not, _ David does not admit aloud.

“How is that even possible? Don’t trees need, like, time to grow?” David asks instead. He doesn’t really know anything about horticulture, or whatever the right term is, but it seems fast.

“We didn’t have a cafeteria in Bunker 8. The dome was used as a greenhouse, mostly. Same with Bunkers 2 and 3. The trees are genetically modified to produce a faster yield. One of the first things we did upstairs was transplant them. They just made their first edible apples.”

“Why don’t we get any of that down here?” David asks.

“Your body needs to adjust to a more varied diet slowly, for one thing. It can be rough on your system when you’re not used to it. But honestly it takes a lot of time and energy to grow food upstairs now. We’re not that eager to be doing it for the people who aren’t ready to come up and help.”

“That’s . . . fair,” David says after considering it, but he is eyeing the bag hanging over Patrick’s shoulder.

“Would you like to try a bite?” Patrick asks. David can tell from his smirk that he knows what the answer will be.

“Mmhmm, yes,” David nods. His stomach growls audibly and Patrick smiles. David feels like a pinball, bouncing from one desire to another tonight. He has forgotten what it feels like to let himself want anything like this, much less several things all at once.

Patrick opens the flap of his bag and takes out the homemade protein bar and the apple, setting them on the little bistro table near the kitchenette while he rights the flap of the bag and transfers it to an adjacent chair. The apple is the kind that would have been picked over at the grocery store in the old world. It’s a misshapen sphere, one side deflated and a little mushy. It is yellow near the core and a pale pinkish-red everywhere else. David doesn’t care. His mouth waters as he sits down at the table for a closer look. 

Patrick sits down next to him, polishes it on the moisture-wicking fabric of his shirt, and takes a bite. He chews carefully, watching David watch him. After he swallows, he leans over and kisses David softly. It is almost what David wants, except it’s too short. Patrick stays close, just far enough away to catch David’s disappointment. Patrick smiles coyly, and David knows suddenly where this is going. David follows Patrick’s mouth and finds it open, just like he hoped it would be. He chases the taste of the apple along Patrick’s tongue, around every sharp edge, into every soft corner. The apple is not as sweet as the dried apples they have in the silo, but it’s also flavored with Patrick, so it's the best thing David has tasted in years.

“Not bad,” David says, corners of his mouth fighting upwards as he pulls away. He has to keep a little control here.

“Okay, now try it for real,” Patrick says, handing the apple to David. 

“Oh my god,” David moans as he feels the juice of the apple seep into his freshly tortured tongue. “This should have been your opening argument for coming upstairs.” 

“I was kind of hoping extra time with me was argument enough,” Patrick says. Patrick closes his hand over David’s on the apple and feeds himself a bite, his lips grazing David's fingers. Patrick smiles at David as he chews, and David wonders how many secrets he's figured out already.

“Time with you is good, too,” David says, taking another bite to hide his own smile. 

Patrick’s hand presses into David’s knee as he comes in for another soft, lingering kiss. David feels simultaneously flushed and drained, blood quickly plunging downward. He should probably make them stop and talk before this goes much further, but there is a quickly closing window of time before Alexis finishes in the bathroom. For as much as he wishes she was not here at all, David knows it is her last tube of her face mask, and he loves her for using it two weeks before her next scheduled application just to give him this time with Patrick.

“I’m glad you decided to try it,” Patrick says. His hand is bolder this time, sliding up David’s thigh as he moves closer, pressing his lips to the line of David’s jaw while he chews another bite.

“It’s just that I probably would have done a lot less stressing about it if I’d known there was real food,” David manages once he has swallowed, savoring the freshness of it.

“What do you think I’ve been eating?” Patrick asks. It’s a kiss right below David’s ear this time, a little suction, a squeeze of his hand near David’s hip, and _ fuck _ David needs that mouth back on his.

“Beans from a can, I believe you said,” David reminds him, not sure how he is still forming words with Patrick’s thumb rubbing back and forth the way it is, high on his leg. David turns his head to get Patrick where he wants him, cutting off his laugh. Patrick’s hand vacates his thigh, which feels like a stark loss, but comes around the back of David’s head to press their lips closer, give them a better angle to lick into each other, and all is right again.

“Bathroom’s free!” Alexis says, chipper and right next to them unknown minutes later. They jump apart. 

“Thanks,” Patrick says, studying the apple core with intensity as his face flushes red. 

“I hope you know I will be watching in class to make sure David doesn’t get. Any. Special. Treatment,” she says, each of the words coming with a poke to Patrick’s arm. Patrick looks to David for help.

“Fuck off, Alexis,” David says. She winks with both eyes at him and crawls into her bed in the corner. 

“Mm, okay David. But don’t think I don’t remember when you slept with the T.A. to pass Intro to Journalism.”

“First, I slept with her before I knew she was the T.A. Second, this is not some pass/fail course. And finally, I haven’t even slept with him yet.” David hears Patrick take a quick breath at _ yet_. “It’s not like we’re being graded.” 

David looks to Patrick then, because he’s just realized he doesn’t know if that’s true.

“Correct. If you were, I wouldn’t be— I’m not assessing you. You can technically go upstairs whenever you feel ready. My job is just to help you feel ready.”

“Well I hope my act of generosity in letting you stay with us tonight is considered in my final assessment.”

“Did you not hear him? There’s no assessment,” David says, hands in the air. Alexis squinches her face at him and then flops back into the pillow, pulling a sleep mask over her eyes.

“Turn off the lights when you’re done eating,” she mumbles into the pillow. 

“You want any more?” Patrick asks, nodding at the apple.

“I had enough. For now,” David says, his eyes dark. “You can use the bathroom first, if you want.”

“Oh. Um, I don’t really have anything.”

“You want to borrow something?” David asks.

“No, that’s okay. I’ll just sleep in my undershirt.”

David swallows. Nods. 

“Maybe toothpaste?” Patrick amends. 

“I’ll show you where everything is. Help yourself.”

David shows him to a shelf in the bathroom with the toothpaste and mouthwash and leaves him to it.

David stares at the couch and then back to the bed. He doesn’t really have a lot of extra blankets. It is not like there are guests who come to stay here. He pulls the comforter off his bed and lays it over the couch. It’s big enough to be a base layer and a blanket. He has a knitted blanket he made for himself, back when they used to have classes to keep people entertained. No one bothers with classes anymore. Everyone has learned everything they are interested in. It isn’t a big blanket but it’s better than nothing. He lays it back over his spot on his bed and puts one of his extra pillows on the couch. By the time Patrick comes out of the bathroom, David has the couch as ready as it can be.

Patrick smiles shyly when he sees the set up.

“Thanks, David.”

“’Night,” he says. He’s about to go in the bathroom when he turns around and catches Patrick unbuttoning his shirt. Once he remembers what he was going to say, it comes out more charged than he intended. “Um, thanks for the apple.”

“You’re welcome,” Patrick smiles. He keeps unbuttoning his shirt, like he is challenging David to watch. He would, except the whole situation is hard enough already with Patrick sleeping on the couch, wanting him as he does. So David goes into the bathroom and shuts the door, pretending like he didn’t see the same want mirrored in Patrick’s eyes.

\-----

Dressed down to his boxers and undershirt, Patrick sighs and curls his legs into his chest on the couch. He’s no longer sure if it’s the silo or David that has him feeling like his stomach is still spiraling down the ramp. He doesn’t usually sleep under blankets, but the comforter smells like David, so he wraps himself up in it. He routinely does too much in a day with too few calories, so even though he can never quite settle his mind below ground, his body falls right to sleep. 

A few hours later, he wakes to the sensation of being squeezed. It’s happening again. He’s being sucked into the bottom of the earth. There is a hand wrapped around him, palm longer than he is tall, pulling him down. It’s hot. He can’t breathe. There is a face, a voice with the hand that are familiar, even though he can’t name who they belong to. There is a smell too, like cloves, that seems to belong to someone else. Are there two hands? He doesn’t know. It feels like maybe two hands. The force is so strong. If there are two, he doesn’t stand a chance.

“Let go,” he whimpers. His voice sounds like it is in another dimension. “Let go. Let me go. Let go!” He tries to make it louder, tries to mean it. Patrick is punching and kicking and writhing and it seems to be helping. At last the hand holding him loosens. He runs and runs, sobbing. The hand is gone but he can’t seem to move. He is running in place, unable to stop.

Patrick sits up in total darkness, awake for real this time. The pressure of the giant hand is gone, but it feels like a memory, not a dream. The smell of cloves lingers. Patrick strains to look around, trying to get his bearings. It is never this dark in his bed. The moon and the stars filter through the cloud cover, and the dim green solar-powered security light that watches over the intersection outside his home lights it up from underneath, so everything is a deep sage gray. Wherever he is now is so dark that he can’t see his hands. He reaches them out in front of him and runs into flesh. It grunts.

“Who are you?” he rasps. He’s coming down in fits and starts. Why can’t he remember where he is?

“Hey, hey, it’s just me. David.” He’s hesitant, not sure if he’s supposed to talk yet. It all comes back suddenly. The storm. The kiss. The bunker. The apple. The couch. _Fuck. _

“Patrick, tell me what to do.” David sounds worried. Maybe a little scared. _Fuck._

“Light,” Patrick says, hoarse.

David reaches next to him and turns on a lamp. Patrick winces at the sudden flash of brightness, so David slides the dimmer to the lowest setting. Patrick sits up, kicking the rest of the blanket off of him.

“Fuck. I’m so sorry, David,” he croaks, folding his body in half, head buried in his arms resting on his knees. “I haven’t had that happen in a year or more. I should have warned you.”

“I’ll get you some water,” David says.

He comes back with a glass and sets it in front of Patrick, then sits next to him on the couch. 

“Unfortunately I’m all out of that iodine flavor you love,” David says tentatively, like he is worried it’s too soon for a joke. It’s not. Patrick snorts and knocks his shoulder into David, a little thank you nudge. He takes a long gulp from the glass of water. 

“Patrick, did someone hurt you upstairs? Or did you . . . have you ever harmed someone?” His face is scrunched like he is afraid to hear the answer, which tells Patrick something about how much of the dream he was acting out.

“No. No, that’s not— It’s not really like that, up there. You need everyone too much to start fighting in earnest. We’re close to the bunkers and Ray’s security. And we’re pretty remote here. Anyone passing by is usually just looking for help getting to the next way stop.”

Since David asked about upstairs specifically, Patrick decides not to go into what happened in Bunker 8.

Patrick drains the rest of the water glass and looks at David apologetically.

“I just— I don’t think I can sleep down here. If I said I was going to go upstairs and work in my office until morning, would you trust me when I tell you it has nothing to do with you?”

“Yes. But if I ask you to try again, will you at least give it a few minutes before losing a full night’s sleep?”

“I don’t know, David,” Patrick says, massaging his forehead with the palm of his hand.

“Come sleep in my bed,” David says. 

“Are you using a nightmare to seduce me?” Patrick asks, smiling, feeling more like himself again.

“Um, that’s definitely not something I _ wouldn’t _ do, but that’s not what I’m doing at the moment, so.” David says. He still looks too worried about Patrick to smile outright, but his eyes have a glimmer about them. “I’ll sleep on the couch if you want, but you need a change of scene.”

“Okay. I’ll try again,” Patrick says. “Can we leave the bathroom light on or something? If it won’t bother you I mean.”

David nods and turns on a small salt lamp on the ledge of the half wall separating his bed from the rest of the space. Then he reaches and turns off the lamp next to Patrick. The salt lamp covers the room in its quiet amber shine. 

“Good?”

Patrick nods. David gets Patrick settled. As he turns back to the couch Patrick stops him. 

“You can stay. I’m not— I just want to sleep right now, but the bed is big enough,” he says. 

“Okay,” David says, a smile tickling the corners of his mouth. He lies down on the other side of the bed, on his back, and Patrick rolls over to face him. David’s face glows softly, beautifully in the amber light. 

Patrick caresses David’s bottom lip with his thumb.

“Thanks,” he whispers. 

“Yeah. Of course,” David says. 

\-----

David feels the bed move under him every so often for nearly a half hour as Patrick tries to get comfortable. Patrick is full of contradictions; it’s what intrigues David about him. But this, tonight, seeing a man he knows to be fearless and confident thrashing and screaming in his sleep . . . It’s unnerving. He can still feel his thumb on his lip, a gesture so quick but achingly intimate. His wants have been bubbling up to the surface over and over tonight, and none of them is as strong as the want to be whatever Patrick needs in this moment. 

“Hey, can I try something?” David asks after Patrick repositions the pillow for the third time. “It’s probably stupid.” 

“Well . . . since you put it that way,” Patrick says, turning his neck to shoot David a grin.

“Roll over so your back is facing me. My nanny, Adelina, used to do this for me when I was younger and I had trouble falling asleep,” he whispers. Her name brings an unexpected tightness to his chest. He wonders if she is safe somewhere, if she is still giving someone comfort, if she is in need of comfort herself. 

“Okay,” Patrick agrees with a curious glance, lifting himself up to turn over. 

“I’m going to trace letters on your back. It’s just random letters, and you don’t have to do anything. Just relax.” 

“Sounds nice,” Patrick says. David can’t see the soft smile, but his voice is warm, closer to the Patrick on Tier 2, the Patrick who explains which plants are useful and which are poison ivy. 

David brushes the wrinkles out of his T-shirt. Patrick closes his eyes. Despite what David said about random letters, Patrick falls asleep to the sensation of David’s fingers tracing S-W-E-E-T D-R-E-A-M-S over and over into his body.

\-----

The small clock on the wall is the only thing that tells Patrick it’s half-past-six when he wakes the next morning, Saturday. There is a window that opens onto the hollow core of the light well, but the shades are drawn and down on Tier 7 there isn’t enough light this time of day to make a difference. He is still on his side where he fell asleep against David’s hands. He can feel David behind him, fingers wedged under Patrick’s ribs. He tries to sit up without disturbing David, but his eyes flutter open at the movement of the mattress under his hand. 

“Hi,” Patrick whispers, resting on his elbow so he is not leering over him. “I should get going.”

“Hi. What time is it?” 

“Six-thirty. I have to get home and check on things there, make rounds for storm damage.”

“Can I walk you out?” David rasps, rubbing his eyes as he tries to rally his body for the activity his mouth has just volunteered.

“Stay. Go back to sleep,” Patrick says. “Thanks for last night.” He leans over and kisses David’s forehead. Then his cheekbone. 

“Hm, you’re welcome,” David whispers. His hand finds Patrick’s hip, and he pulls himself closer. He chooses the corner of Patrick’s jaw for the start of his attentions. He stalls there for a minute, and Patrick feels his sleep-heavy body awaken under David’s hands. 

“This okay?” David murmurs against his neck, checking in.

“Yes. Yeah. Really good.”

Patrick slides his hand under David’s shirt. 

“This okay?” Patrick whispers, tracing the knobs of David’s spine.

“Mmh— ah, yes,” David stutters, breath catching as Patrick’s short nails find his skin. “Anywhere is okay.”

The wants of the night before pile on to the needs of the morning. Patrick is hard already and David feels so good under his hands. He massages his way across his broad shoulders, down David’s arms. David’s hands find their way under Patrick’s shirt. They are close enough now that Patrick can tell he is not the only one who is needy. Patrick starts rocking, his mouth finding David’s, his hands on David’s back so he can heave himself closer.

Patrick’s body shudders wherever it touches David’s: his lower lip sucked into David’s mouth, his back where David’s hands tease along his waistband, his thighs where David’s knee presses between them. Patrick moans into David’s mouth as his leg gives him contact where he needs it most.

“Um, excuse me, I may be wearing an eye mask but I’m not wearing ear plugs,” Alexis says groggily from the other side of the half-wall. 

“Shit,” Patrick says, rolling back so they are no longer touching. David covers his face with the sheet and Patrick can feel him shaking. There is a moment of doubt before Patrick realizes he is trying not to laugh. 

“It’s not funny,” Patrick says in a stage whisper.

A sharp snorting laugh escapes. 

“I think I need to use your shower before I go,” Patrick gripes, plucking the sheet away from David’s face enough to see his eyes.

“Help yourself,” David says, unabashedly adjusting himself through his pants.

Mindful of water rations, Patrick takes a quick shower. He takes a look around the bathroom as he dries off.

There are about six pots and bottles of products Patrick has no clue what to do with on David's shelf. He sniffs each one, trying to find the source of his scent. It’s the moisturizer that smells the most similar. The jar says it’s infused with wintermint, frankincense, and cloves. 

He makes use of the mouthwash and toothpaste and a real faucet pouring into a nice wide sink basin. Patrick almost never allows himself to use the running water in the silos unless he has to wash his hands. He doesn’t like anything that makes him forget how uncomfortable it is down here. But he allows himself to indulge this time, because he’s out of his depth with David, in way too deep in general here on Tier 7. He is hoping the process of old world hygiene will relax him, remind him the silo has pros amidst all the cons. 

It has been a long time since Patrick has seen his reflection in a large mirror, he realizes, toweling off his face. He looks older, world-worn. It’s not a bad look, if he is being impartial about it. He was being mistaken for a teenager well into his twenty-fifth year so a little age helps. His hair is too shaggy, though. He should make it a priority to get it trimmed next time he can arrange it with Janine. Normally he clips it short to extend the time between cuts, but he remembers the way David’s hands felt tugging on it just a few minutes ago as they tried to get their mouths closer, their tongues deeper, their bodies in alignment. Maybe for now he'll keep it longer.

\-----

David rolls onto his back when the bathroom door opens. Patrick comes back out dressed in yesterday’s clothes and sits on the bed next to him, facing him. 

“I have to take care of some things for Ray the next few . . . I’m not sure how many days. A friend of mine is going to come do first aid training while I’m gone.” He rests his hand on David’s chest, smoothing the fabric of his T-shirt.

“Are you . . . is it safe, what you’re doing?” Without realizing he is doing it, David reaches for Patrick, wrapping his hand around the strong muscle of his forearm. David’s fingers graze the raised skin of his scar. He forgot to look last night to see if it went up into the sleeve of his undershirt. Patrick closes his eyes for a minute, taking in the brush of David’s fingers along the extra-sensitive line.

“As safe as anywhere,” Patrick says. It’s not the answer David is looking for. 

Patrick must see it on his face because he squeezes his hand in reassurance. 

“It’ll be the first time I’m looking forward to coming back to a silo, David,” he adds. It is probably as reassuring as he can be while still being honest, which David appreciates. “I’m planning to be back Wednesday, so we’ll start crossbows in the firing range Thursday.” 

He talks like he is ticking down a checklist, and David smiles softly as he realizes there’s a whole plan. David can’t remember the last time someone made a plan to spend time with him. He supposes at least an outline of a plan is necessary without text messaging or telephones, but David is going to count it as a romantic gesture. 

“Anyway after that, I would like it if you wanted to stay after and help me clean up, or just keep me company if you want. And then maybe we could do something together. Like an activity. Here. Downstairs. Something you’d enjoy.”

“Sure,” David says, brain spinning about what that might be that could involve another person and not a bed.

“On Friday, I’d like to try to take you outside if you’re ready,” he says. “Just you. And just for five or ten minutes the first time.”

“Wow. Okay,” David says, surprised. Patrick brushes David’s hair back so it lays against the pillow. He leans over a little more so he can say the next thing without Alexis hearing.

“I have a bed upstairs and a place all to myself. Someday soon I’d like to try some things with you in it. If you want.”

David nods. Swallows. Patrick is still running his fingers through his hair, watching them separate the dark strands. His eyes return to David’s. 

“I don’t know if I trust myself to know when you’re ready to go upstairs. Because I want you in that bed, and I’m worried I’m going to rush you upstairs to get you there. So I need you to be the one to decide if you’re ready for whatever you might find up there. Can you do that for us, David?”

“I’ll try,” David promises, although his brain hears _ us _ and stops functioning, so he’s not really sure what exactly he has promised. It’s all he can say, really. He has no idea if he can control this desire to be in Patrick’s orbit, upstairs, downstairs, and anywhere else he might go.

“And no matter what you decide about going upstairs, I’d like to stay and have dinner with you on Friday. Will you have dinner with me?”

“Sure, yeah,” David says. 

Patrick kisses him softly, tasting like David’s toothpaste. 

“Okay. It’s a date.”


	4. You were only waiting for this moment to arise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: A conversation in this chapter describes previous trauma. This conversation occurs on the couch on Tier 1. If you would like to skip it, leave me a comment and I will try my best to provide a more benign summary. You'll want to skip from David asking, "Can I ask you something?" to the next ----- section break.

It turns out Patrick’s friend who is handling training while he's away is a bearded, chiseled, perpetually optimistic man named Ted. He was a physician’s assistant in the old world, but he is the closest they have to a medical doctor who also understands life upstairs. He is generous and kind and patient, just like Patrick. David wonders, not for the first time, if there is more in the water up there than iodine. All the people upstairs seem to be capable and kindhearted. Is it the new world that makes these people this way, or is this what they mean by survival of the fittest? 

As Ted takes them through some first aid basics on Tuesday, his second day as substitute trainer, David can’t decide whether or not he likes him. Ted is so genuinely enthusiastic about natural remedies and first aid and plant-based medicine and nutrient-rich diets and how lucky they are to have all this knowledge still available to them. He has chosen to see upstairs for all its opportunities. It is hard not to be jealous of people whose old personality slots so easily into the new world. 

Alexis, it seems, has also taken notice. She suddenly needs a lot of help picking up basic concepts, and Ted is happy to oblige. David thinks it is more than generosity on Ted’s part to offer to stay after today and help Alexis learn how to apply a tourniquet. 

The thought makes David miss Patrick. He misses their conversations every day as well as the still-fresh feel of him against his body. David also worries about him. Patrick seems more terrified of the bunker than the world upstairs, but that doesn’t entirely explain the dream. And it does nothing to ease David’s anxiety about what things are like up there. David wonders if Patrick thinks of him, downstairs, working with Ted. He said Ted was a friend. Maybe he has a whole bunch of friends upstairs, and he doesn’t think of David much at all.

\-----

“You’ve been upstairs, right?” David asks Stevie over lunch on Wednesday. He knows she has, but he is hoping that if he eases into the topic he can actually get her to talk about it.

“Only twice. Never past the perimeter. Why?”

“I think I’m going for the first time on Friday.”

“Wow. That’s— Are you sure you’re ready?”

“No. Not at all. But Patrick says it’s just for ten minutes the first time. Is it so bad that I won’t be able to handle ten minutes?”

“It’s not that exactly. It’s just . . . unpredictable.”

“What does that mean?” David asks, eyebrow raised. It’s unlike Stevie to give considerate answers when snark is available.

“David, I don’t want to talk about it,” Stevie says.

“Please,” he begs, serious. “I don’t know how else to know if I’m ready.” She finishes chewing her salad and sets her fork down.

“Everyone reacts differently. I can’t explain it really. Some people love it, and they move up there as quickly as possible. For some people, it’s . . . it’s too much.” 

“And for you?” he asks.

“It was a lot,” she says with a shrug. “But mostly I didn’t want to get attached to it. So I don’t go anymore.” 

Stevie’s job means she has to run the silo until all the residents have moved out. David knows there is a possibility she will get to leave before that, coming back and forth until it’s completely empty, but for now it means she is stuck. 

“How do you think it will be for me?” David asks. 

“I think your first time will be fine,” she says carefully. 

“Oh. Good.”

“David, I think your first time will be fine. But I think, for you, living up there will be a hard adjustment.”

“Are you calling me high maintenance?” he asks, smiling at her. She doesn’t smile back. 

“No. But only because I know how you feel about that phrase.” 

“I want to be one of those people who just likes it up there, Stevie,” he says, and it’s almost a plea, like he hopes she can say or do something to make it happen. She can’t.

“Do you want to like it for you? Or for Patrick?” she asks. 

“I don’t know. Both, maybe?” he shrugs. He thinks about the last five weeks. “Something happened when I started this training program. Something happened before Patrick started to matter. And now that Patrick matters too, I don’t really know what to do with all of this.”

“How much do you know about Patrick?” Stevie asks. She’s clearly trying to be neutral, but there must be some reason she is asking.

“Not enough. I know he is not only what he seems. And it feels ridiculous to say, but the more complicated he turns out to be, the more I like him.”

Stevie takes a bite of food and watches him, waits him out.

“And even though we haven’t known each other that long, I think maybe he makes me . . . happy?”

“Why is that a question?”

“I don’t know!” David gripes, and she smiles a little at that. “It feels weird. Like maybe it’s not a word that should exist here, or anywhere in this world, after what happened.”

She ponders that for a minute. 

“I like this for you,” she decides. 

“Let’s wait and see if there’s something to like, please,” David says, almost as wary now that she is on board as he was when she was skeptical. 

Stevie studies him a long time again, her scrutiny making him uncomfortable. 

“Look, I’m not saying I’m an expert at any of this, but my best friend saying he’s met someone new who makes him happy? That’s the first thing I’ve heard in four years that makes me think maybe we aren’t really, truly fucked after all.” 

\-----

Crossbows, it turns out, are different from rifles. David finds something satisfying about the mechanics of them, the sharp kick of the arrow releasing, the quiet whistle of it through the air, the distinctive thump as it sinks into the foam target on the other side of the range. David even manages to hit the inner ring a few times. And there’s something different about the lingering touches of the instructor, too. 

Patrick had stopped down at Tier 7 before the training session to let David know he made it back. They’d only had five minutes between Alexis leaving and training starting, but Patrick had taken advantage of the empty room to press David against the door, kissing away his insecurities from the week.

When the crossbow lesson is over, the materials cleaned up, Patrick leans against the wall on the side of the firing range, looking at David expectantly.

“So?” he asks.

“So?” David repeats, pretending he doesn’t know what is next.

“I agreed to be stuck with you down here for a couple extra hours doing an activity of your choosing,” Patrick says.

“Stuck with me?” David gripes, crossing his arms, playing along. 

“Hey,” Patrick says, pulling him closer. “It’s really good to see you.”

“You too,” David says into his lips. It’s a gentle kiss, but the way Patrick is looking at him when it is over is not gentle at all.

“So, what are we doing?” Patrick asks. David considers scrapping the plan entirely in favor bribing Alexis to occupy his parents so they can be alone on Tier 7. But Patrick enjoys plans. Patrick probably doesn’t get to do much according to a plan upstairs, based on what he has said. So David decides to follow the plan. 

“It’s in Stevie’s office.”

When they get there, David opens the top drawer in her desk and pulls out a clipboard and a pen. He reaches to open a plastic case on the desk but stops, suddenly nervous.

“So, I didn’t think you’d want to be sitting down in the Rec Center since it’s even lower than my place. The pool is empty, as you know. The rock climbing wall is, ah, sort of tall? I guess? And I think there’s only so much mileage we’ll get out of the putting green.”

“Okay, so what are we doing with the clipboard? Pictionary?”

“No . . . I had Stevie make us a scavenger hunt?” he says, no longer sure it’s a good idea. This isn’t the kind of thing David would have ever planned in the old world. It had just seemed like something Patrick would like—and he clearly does. Patrick smiles so big it transforms his face, and it’s so different from his normal, adult, gritting-out-the-apocalypse smile, that David is taken aback.

“That sounds really fun,” Patrick says, meaning it.

“Okay. So the other thing is . . . um, I have an old Polaroid camera. And I was thinking we could take pictures when we find stuff since it’s our first, uh, date or whatever. So then we’d have them, you know, if we wanted them later.”

“Yes. Yes, I want to,” Patrick says. The smile has been replaced by something much more serious, but no less joyful.

“Okay,” David says, smiling back.

“This is cool,” Patrick says, taking the camera and looking at it. “Where’d you get it?”

“It’s— It was a gift from an ex, so if that makes you uncomfortable we don’t have to—”

“Does this ex live here?” he asks. David remembers the way he looked when Jake arrived and scrunches his face. 

“No. It was someone from before. And the thing with Jake and Stevie—“

“Hey, you don’t have to explain. It doesn’t bother me that you’ve been with— I dunno, multiple people. Multiple people at once, I guess.”

“Um,” David says uncomfortably. “Well, it wasn’t like that with them. Stevie and I were just both seeing Jake and then he wanted it to be, uh, all of us, but I said no.”

“Oh. So you’ve never had multiple—”

“Um, I have, yes, but not with anyone you know. Or will know, probably,” David says. It still somehow catches him off guard, realizing he doesn’t know what happened to most of the people he used to spend time with, that he will probably never know what happened to someone he cared about, or someone he didn’t.

“Okay. It's fine, David. It doesn't bother me.”

“I don’t want to be with multiple people now,” David says. “I just— Um, I like just you and me, what we’re doing. That’s good. For me. Now.” David feels like he has to spit out the words. Patrick reaches and squeezes his hand.

“Me too. Anyway, you planned a fun date for us,” Patrick says, trying for chipper, dragging them back towards simple.

They look over the list and decide to start on Tier 2 and work their way down, seeing what they can find. Stevie has made living units—where it might be logical to find most things—off-limits. So they will have to do some exploring.

“There are succulents in the library for something growing that’s not food,” Patrick says. He crowds into David’s space to study the list, all that solid warmth against his side, and suddenly this idea is seeming a lot less cheesy.

“Okay, let’s start there.”

The library is on Tier 3 with the Training Center. It’s almost empty—just the daughter of the McAllisters reading in a chair—and she mostly ignores them as Patrick takes a picture of David holding a small cactus. 

From there they cross to the Cube and David takes a picture of Patrick attempting to balance on a yoga ball in the gym for something round. The Cube tends to be the busiest part of the silo, even with the golf driving range simulator and the pool out of commission now, although two of the McAllisters’ three teenaged sons are using the pool as a skateboard ramp. A few residents in the gym stop to ask Patrick questions. Rumors are starting to fly around the silo now that the first tangible connection has been opened to the world upstairs. Patrick deflects most of the inquiries.

“I’ll be starting another training group in two or three weeks. You should give it a try,” he says for the sixth time, still cordial but growing less so. David decides to forgo the other areas of the Cube that might have items on the list and leads Patrick back through the tunnel.

“I’m stumped on something made before 1980. There is probably something in your place but we can’t go in there,” Patrick says.

“Here,” David says, handing Patrick the picture of him with the cactus. “Hold it up.” Even though this Polaroid cartridge is technically newer, David is going to count it. It’s really an excuse to get a picture of Patrick's hands. David tries to frame them, hoping the photo catches the way his callused fingers gingerly hold the Polaroid of David by the edges. 

They go all the way down to the maintenance room for something you use to build. Patrick has to open it with his staff card. Once inside, they check off the toolbox. It’s too dark in the room and they only have ten cartridges so they skip the photo. It’s a small room with a dusty floor and not so much as a foot of empty wall, but David makes sure to take advantage of the brief moment of total privacy to kiss Patrick properly. Their hands are full with camera and clipboard and photos so they can’t get them everywhere they want. Regardless, David feels sufficiently charged.

Next they stop in the Rec Center, where they pause to watch Twyla and her cousin hit a few balls into the pockets of the red-felted pool table. When they’ve finished, David takes a picture of Patrick lining up to sink the eight-ball for something with the number eight. The look of total concentration on Patrick’s face, holding the pool cue, makes David a little weak in the knees. Twyla starts chatting about training, drawing the attention of four members of the Rudolph family playing a board game at the table. Before they can stop it, Patrick is sucked back in to more pent up questions about upstairs. 

\-----

When they are finally ascending the ramp again, David tells a story about the Rudolph family crashing one of the Rose Family’s annual Christmas parties, gesturing wildly with his hands full. Both the gesturing, which requires one retrieval of all their photos from the floor, and the story make Patrick laugh. Patrick realizes, as they circle around all the living units on Tiers 4 through 7, that he forgot to stress about how deep they were down on Tier 8 in the Rec Center, or Tier 9 in the maintenance room. 

David has an idea for something that comes in a two-pack, so they stop at the commissary on Tier 1. Most of the non-staple food has been used up by now, but David finds what he is looking for.

“Twinkies?” Patrick asks.

“Yeah. They’re so gross. Let’s get them,” David says. He punches in his resident ID, and the machine spits out the last one.

They go up to Tier 1, and Patrick sits on the outdoor sofa where they watched the storm after their first kiss. David snaps a picture of him. Patrick hopes the picture captures the way his face looks, thinking of that night. 

“I still don’t see how this fits something you can only use outdoors. We’re literally using it inside,” Patrick says, gesturing to the couch.

“Yes, but this type of furniture is only _ correct _ on outdoor porches and patios.”

“Okay, David,” Patrick says, because he doesn’t care enough to win this time. 

“Can I join you?” David asks.

“Sure.”

David settles with his head in Patrick’s lap. He must see Patrick’s look of surprise, because he asks: “This okay?”

“Yeah. It’s good. Can I, uh, touch your hair?” Patrick drags lightly through the short hair at David’s temple. 

“I think I said you can touch me anywhere,” David says, smiling with his eyes closed. Patrick wonders if he can feel how hard this is making him.

“You did say that,” Patrick agrees, combing through David’s hair with his hand. 

“That feels good. Want one?” David asks, holding up the bag of Twinkies. 

“Nope. No, I don’t.”

“Suit yourself,” David says, shrugging and opening the package. It still looks . . . disgusting, really, but Patrick grabs the second one anyway. 

“One hand for the hair, one hand for the food,” David says, absolutely serious.

“Okay. Cheers,” he says as he taps the cakes together.

He takes a bite of the oily yellow sponge. It’s sickeningly sweet on his tongue, unaccustomed as he is to refined sugar. He wants the experience of it though, to share something from the old world with David, a world where, if things had come together differently, they could have met in New York or Toronto or San Francisco and fallen in love and started a business and adopted a dog and fought over movies while eating Chinese takeout. Or perhaps it’s a reminder that in the old world, without the fires, they might never have met. And he would have missed out on this.

“Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer unless you want to.” David looks at him, hesitant, and then back up at the dome. The cafeteria is closed to prepare for dinner, so for the moment at least they are alone.

“Sure.”

“That nightmare . . . Did something bad happen in the bunker where you lived?”

Patrick’s hand freezes in his hair. He blows out a gust of air as he thinks of possible answers, considers whether he should share a mild version of the story, or the truth. He decides on something in between.

“Most of the people in Bunker 8 were Ray’s staff or people he knew with more modest means. There was an operations manager, like this one. He was . . . he was what you’d expect, I guess, out of someone who gains power by the world falling down around them. He—Eli—was supposed to be in charge of collecting payment for certain things. Certain necessities. Most of us didn’t have the hard money that the other bunker residents have. As people started to run out of money, word got around that he would accept other, um, forms of payment.”

“Oh my god, Patrick. Did he—“

“No. I had enough to get by without his help. Eventually though I tried to help other people find a way around him too. He didn’t like that. He found different ways to get to me. And if anyone stood up for me, they got the same treatment.”

David looks at him, and Patrick can see he’s horrified. He wonders if he should even tell him the rest. He can’t stop himself.

“David, I felt like I couldn’t breathe in the bunker. I left my family and I moved to work with Ray with this plan to find myself, or whatever. God, that sounds trivial these days. Anyway, I was stuck there, almost 100 feet below ground, wishing I hadn’t left my family and my friends with so many things unsaid. Grieving everyone I lost. And angry at them too, for making me feel like meeting their expectations should be enough to make me happy. Angry at them for making it feel like the only way to change my life was to leave it. The other stuff with Eli didn’t start until later. About a year in, everyone realized this wasn’t going to be a short-lived thing and they burned through their supplies too quickly."

Patrick risks another glance at David. He reaches for Patrick's hand but stays quiet. 

“When I first started trying to help people go around Eli, he’d do things like shut off my water. Not all the time, but enough so that I would have to go a day or two without it, that I had to start hiding bottles around my chamber just in case. Or later I would wake up some nights and he’d just be sitting there. Standing there next to the bed. Eventually I couldn’t sleep; I was paranoid all the time. Then one day he stole all my pictures, letters—everything I had from my family. All but two pictures that I had in a book that he didn’t find. He told me I couldn’t have them back unless I did whatever he wanted. A few times I thought about just giving in. I wanted to, even, just to put an end to all of it. But I— I’m too fucking stubborn for my own good, I guess. Anyway, it was a nightmare, really. Like I had been buried alive.”

He looks at David and tries a feeble smile, tries to convey that he understands there is no good response. That David doesn’t have to say anything. 

“Can I— Um,” David doesn’t seem to know how to finish, so he sits up and holds out his arms. Patrick falls into them gratefully, and David reclines back against the arm of the couch so Patrick can lean his weight against him. His head finds a spot in David’s neck, breath warm against his chest as he slots neatly there. It feels like David’s edges and corners were carved out just for him to sink into them here, now, to be held by a human who has something to give, who asks for nothing in return. Patrick’s hand fists David’s sweater over his heart, and the weight of his clenched fist against its thudding feels more intimate than any of the places he has touched David’s skin so far. David holds him, rubbing firm circles up his back. David slows his own breathing. Eventually, Patrick’s breathing steadies and matches it. 

“How long did this go on?” David asks once he’s settled. 

“I don’t remember exactly when it started, but I lived in the silo for five hundred and seventy-nine days.”

“You’ve been upstairs for a long time,” David realizes. 

“Yeah. Back then, coming upstairs was . . . We were the first ones. We had to figure everything out. It was really scary, not knowing what we were going into, what we would need to survive, much less how to do it. But— I know this sounds strange, but it also finally felt like living.”

“That doesn’t sound that strange. But. Patrick.” David swallows. “Your parents, are they—“

“I don’t know. They were supposed to come here when everything started and they never made it. I used to assume they were gone. But we’re discovering more and more people survived in impossible circumstances, so I suppose there’s hope. It’s a seven-hour drive by car. There’s no way I can make that trip by foot right now, so I’ll probably never see them again. I guess it feels better to believe they’ve somehow survived, that they’re living on a little ridge somewhere with a mangy cat and a big garden. Happy.”

The cat is important to Patrick. His mom loves them. With Patrick’s allergy, she had to give up her sweet cat Mittens when he was born. He likes to imagine, if his parents are alive, that there is a cat in her life where Patrick can’t be. That it would be a small consolation. 

“And this person. Eli. Is he—” David trails off. Patrick knows what he’s about to ask.

“Ray took care of him when he found out what was happening," Patrick says. He sighs. "You asked me once if I’ve ever harmed someone. I haven’t. But there were times when I wanted to. He’s gone now in any case.”

\-----

Minutes pass. Hours maybe. David wants to say something to make it better somehow, but what can he possibly say?

David’s mind plays back through Patrick’s story. It’s a lot. Sometimes, when he loses Patrick to his thoughts, he recognizes someone who has been through trauma. But these days, everyone has that look from time to time. As much as his family irritates him sometimes, he knows he’s lucky to have them here with him.

It’s hard not to think about his own experience moving to the silo. Parts of Patrick’s story seem familiar. The feeling of loneliness, of being trapped in a situation you didn’t cause. He remembers the kind of frantic energy that everyone had those first few months, when it seemed like a bizarre vacation, one that would end any day. That’s how he got into it with Stevie and Jake in the first place, looking for a distraction. It wasn’t until the first year had passed that everyone began to accept this would be their home until further notice.

David can’t seem to stop his own tears. He tries to blink them away but Patrick is too perceptive. He lifts his head and reaches up, sweeping his thumb across the top ridge of David’s cheekbones, soaking the wetness into his cracked fingertip. 

“Sorry, I think this is just dragging up some old shit for me,” David tries to explain.

“Glad I could do that for you among my many other talents,” Patrick quips, and settles back into David’s chest.

“Yes you’re multi-talented,” David agrees. 

“It’s possible I’m really bad at dating though,” Patrick says, a sympathetic smile playing at his mouth. “I think I sorta killed the romance.”

“I asked about it. Even knowing the answer couldn’t be good, I asked the question.”

“Okay, so we’re both really bad at dating,” Patrick decides. This time the smile is a little bigger, gently teasing.

“That sounds right,” David says, trying to think of the last time he even used the word dating to describe what he was doing with someone.

“You know on one of these dates we should make it a priority to eat better food. I think that dessert burned its way down my throat.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It did,” Patrick agrees. “You must have done something right, though. There was a little bit there where I almost, _ almost _ didn’t want to go home tonight.” David laughs and takes it for the oddly phrased compliment that it is.

“Well you said I have until six. There’s still time for me to talk you into staying.” 

They rest there for a while, looking up at the dome, talking a little and kissing a little and laughing a lot. There has been a gentle pull between them all night, but it’s starting to shift into something a little stronger, more insistent. 

The dinner chime rings down the light well, which means people will be arriving on Tier 1 soon.

“So how’d we end up on our list?” Patrick asks, sitting up. 

David reaches over to the teak coffee table and picks up the clipboard. Patrick glances at it over his shoulder, hand warm on David's thigh. 

“I think your sweater qualifies as something soft,” Patrick says into his shoulder, brushing his lips against it, eyebrows raised playfully as he looks up at him. 

“Check,” David says. He trades Patrick the clipboard for the camera and holds it out, hoping he can get them both in the frame. He takes three pictures, one for each of them and an extra in case one doesn’t turn out. Patrick kisses him again, his cheek this time, then the little bump on his chin, then his lips. 

“Anything else?” Patrick asks, handing the list back to David. 

“Three things: something sticky, something smaller than a paperclip, and something with wheels.”

“I think there’s a laundry cart with wheels on the way back to my office. We can probably find the other two there.”

“Let’s go.”

They straighten their clothes and take the stairs back to Tier 2 for expediency. They check the laundry cart off on the way. 

Back in Patrick’s office, door closed behind them, they set the camera and the Polaroids on the shelf. Patrick leans against the desk, studying David. His long-sleeved T-shirt is heathered blue and it looks soft. It’s a little more fitted than most of his clothing. It’s easy enough to imagine what might be under it. 

“You did pretty well with the crossbow today, David. Especially for a beginner,” Patrick says.

David offers a hard eye-roll in return.

“You know, there are several things at which I do excel,” David says. “If you’re interested in a demonstration.”

“Mm, very interested,” Patrick says, like he has orchestrated the conversation right to this point on purpose from the minute the door closed. 

“When and where would you like me to start?” David asks.

“Show me the first thing you want me to do for you,” Patrick says, his pupils wide and dark. “Show me now.”

It’s hard for David to know where to start when the answer to what he wants is everything. So he starts where they last left off, with a kiss. It’s long and deep and promising. 

“Hey, I know it was a lot tonight. We can wait if you want to,” David says, just far enough away to see his eyes.

“Same,” Patrick says. “But personally, I think this world is just really hard sometimes. And it would be sort of nice to enjoy something in it for a change. To enjoy you. If you want.” 

David wants.

He takes a step towards Patrick, slotting a thigh between his legs and drawing him closer. David’s hands know how to adjust so that his mouth, his body, can put someone where he wants them. He does this subtly, tipping Patrick’s head with a thumb, turning his hip with his palm, using the heel of his hands to tease nipples through the fabric of his shirt as he skims them up his chest. Patrick keens into him, dropping his knees so David’s thigh makes contact between his legs. David’s thumb hooks Patrick’s collar so his mouth can have access to the line where his neck meets his shoulder, enjoying the tang of salt left over from exploring the silo as he traces the line of muscle with his tongue. David holds them in place against the desk while their hearts race forward.

David’s hands stall on Patrick’s belt. 

“Can I?” David asks. 

“Yeah,” Patrick says, then again: “Yes. Yeah.”

David undoes the belt, the top button, the zipper and pauses there, fingers just grazing the soft skin, crossing back and forth over the trail of hair between his navel and his cock under the waistband of his boxer briefs. 

“David, please,” Patrick says, almost whines.

David uses his hands to work Patrick’s pants down just enough to grasp him. Patrick is not as long as some people David has been with it, but he’s thick and needy and god, David can’t wait to see what Patrick feels like inside him. David’s spit-slicked hands are gentle at first, demanding more as he goes. He can tell Patrick is trying not to thrust into it as he teases the slit, his hand loosening it’s hold.

“You have to— uh—I can’t,” Patrick staggers into his palm, somewhere between a thrust and a spasm. It's dizzying, being able to bring Patrick to this point where his calm sputters out. David strokes once, harder, and again and catches as much as he can in his hands, holding Patrick as he comes. David takes an experimental lick of his finger, just to see if Patrick’s into it. He must be because his eyes go darker still, a little wild even, and he is pulling at David’s hips. David files that away for another time and manages to clean up the rest of the come as best he can with tissues on the desk.

“I think we can check off something sticky on the scavenger hunt,” Patrick huffs, like he is not quite sure how to deliver a line like that, but still couldn’t pass it up.

“Should I take a picture of you like this?” David asks, smirking. “I think there’s one more in the camera.”

Patrick’s head snaps up, looking at David. The fact that he doesn’t outright dismiss it is something David will have to file away too, to mull over when he can think clearly. Or at all. 

“Maybe next time,” Patrick mutters, focusing on David’s pants. “Can I?” Patrick asks, hands poised to dip inside.

“Yeah. Anywhere,” David repeats, although he is touched that Patrick keeps asking. 

David is wearing the soft joggers he wears when they meet in the Cube, so it’s easy to get them down enough to reach him. Patrick starts with a light trace up the vein along the underside of David’s cock, like he just wants to feel him twitch against his fingertip. 

“Fuck,” David gasps. “Here.” David takes his hand and licks it, hoping it will help him last a little longer. 

It was just a fingertip; it shouldn’t make his knees buckle. When Patrick wraps his wet, work-callused hand around David’s length, it’s almost too much. The coarseness feels so different from David’s own hands; his whole body thrums under the attention. Patrick dabs his finger into the precome leaking from the tip. 

“I like you like this,” he says, teasing the vein with his finger again so he can get a better view before he wraps his hands back around David. David lets out a strangled laugh.

“That’s good, but you really have to stop doing that with your finger.”

“What? This?” Patrick asks, his finger at it again. David sags against him, teeth sinking into his shoulder

“I’m so getting you back for— ah, _ fuck._” Patrick starts in earnest and David can’t finish his sentence.

Patrick is a little clumsy at first until he figures out the angle, the pacing that works for David. Even so, the urgent heat inside him builds and builds. David lasts a few more strokes before he’s coming between them.

\-----

David wasn’t sure about going upstairs until Patrick’s story about his time in the silo. Patrick is braver than he realized. For taking the job with Ray, moving away, trying to change his life. For refusing to accept the way the people in Bunker 8 were being treated, at great personal cost to himself. For going upstairs before anyone else. For seeing something in the world he found that had potential. For letting the new world remake him and heal him so that he could share the promise of that world with others. David wants Patrick to share whatever there is to find upstairs with him. It’s a new want in his growing list of wants since he first encountered Patrick Brewer in the ramp. David is equal parts intrigued and terrified to see if the new world will remake him too.

Which is why when Patrick asks him on the way to dinner Friday if he still feels ready to go upstairs afterwards, he says yes.

“I like to take people out just before dark on their first time,” Patrick says when David asks how it will go. “Everything is muted in twilight. The contrast to your memories won’t be as stark.” 

“Okay,” David says, desperately clinging to his nerve.

“And you can turn back at any point, okay? Any point.”

“Okay.”

They sit down with their fish and greens, and Patrick reaches in his bag and pulls out a small jar. 

“What’s that?” David asks.

“It’s approximately pesto. I made it with sunflower oil and basil from the garden. It will help the fish,” he says, putting a spoonful on his meal before passing it to David. “If you like it you can keep it.”

“Thanks,” David says, touched.

“So I feel like I should apologize, again, for killing the mood yesterday,” Patrick says. 

“I had a nice time—in the end.” David’s wiggling eyebrows pull a little smile out of Patrick.

“I should have been a little more . . . I don’t know. Subtle? I got wrapped up in the story, and I think I was hoping to exorcise my demons a little by talking about it. Like I could prove I was past it.”

“Are you? Past it?”

“I think I’ve put it past me,” Patrick says carefully. “As much as I can, anyway.”

David reaches across the table and weaves his fingers into Patrick’s while he keeps talking.

“Anyway I’m sorry if you felt weird, doing that in my office after such an intense conversation. I think I get used to operating in catastrophe mode? Like it used to be cliché that any moment could be your last, but it’s not anymore, you know? So I just go at things without thinking them through.” 

Patrick looks down at his plate, chasing the last of the greens through the oily remnants. It didn’t occur to David to mind that the previous afternoon had been a little uneven, which makes him wonder if Patrick is regretting it.

“How do you feel about it today?” God, there’s a question he never would have asked in the old world. 

“I’ve never needed someone like this,” he confesses boldly, ballsy. “Which is why I think I need to go slow here. I don’t want to be reckless with you.” His eyes dart up to David’s, then hold there. His thumb traces the line of the vein on David’s wrist.

“Okay.” David agrees. “There’s not much privacy down here anyway. Once I’m able to spend more time upstairs, maybe we can talk again about that bed of yours.” 

_ I want, _David’s body screams at him. He can’t listen to that right now. Patrick needs.

“Yeah, okay,” Patrick says, relaxing in his chair. “I’d like that.”

When they finish and put their plates in the dirty dish bins, Patrick checks the clock and says it is time.

\-----

The door that everyone used to move in, the one at the top of the ramp, is sealed. Instead, Patrick leads him across the tunnel into the Cube. 

There is an open stair at one corner of the Cube that David has never used before. Never seen anyone use. They climb past the security barracks door at the lower landing and continue until they reach the top. There are warning signs all over the door in front of them, telling whoever dares to push it open that they will be entering a zone of the bunker where exposure to outside air is possible. Patrick turns and checks in. David gives a brief nod, and they go through.

The door closes behind them with a mechanical sucking sound, and the pressure changes so David feels squeezed by the little room. Patrick takes him through the door on the other side and they emerge into a vast garage space, thankfully back at a normal pressure. It’s nearly empty. A few stalls look like they were designed for livestock but have never been used. There are a handful of vehicles parked in one corner, tires flat. One of them is the Range Rover that drove them here, he realizes. He remembers the license plate, one of the slideshow of images seared into his brain from his last day upstairs.

They approach another airlock on the other side of the garage, with more warnings on doors telling them they are about to be outside, beyond the security perimeter, in the unfiltered, unprotected open air. 

Patrick pauses at the last door and takes David’s hand, squeezing reassurance.

“There’s no way this is supposed to go. Let your body react however it wants. I’m here for you. We can come back inside whenever you want, even if it’s right away. Okay?”

“Yeah. Yes, okay,” David says. Patrick steps out and holds open the door.

As David steps into the waning light, it feels like he is walking into a world that has been paused. It looks almost grayscale in the twilight, so he can’t make out the colors. Nothing moves, not even the air that hangs over him. It’s such a contrast from the air in the silo that it feels almost smothering.

His body reacts to the stifling air with a deep breath. It’s like his lungs have been aching to breathe this unfiltered air with all the ugly contaminants of this new world. As though his body wants to sort out, at a chemical level, all that he has been missing. 

The breath stings a little on his tongue. There’s an acidity to the air that makes his eyes water. It’s a sharp tinge in the front of his nose, like there’s a campfire nearby. In another minute, he’s crying.

“Fuck,” he mutters, swiping angrily at his eyes. He’s gasping now, aching for more of this horrible, beautiful air, his lungs sucking it in between sobs. 

The world feels different, looks different, but it also feels familiar. Like a friendship picked up effortlessly after several years apart. It’s been four years since he stood with soft soil and grass beneath his feet. He feels grateful now that he didn’t know to miss it. He’s going to miss this every minute he is in the silo from this point forward. 

“Hey, hey, let’s go back in. It’s okay if you’re not ready,” Patrick says, eyes worried.

“No. No, I want to stay. It’s not bad. I wish my face wasn’t doing this. It’s not bad.”

Patrick squeezes his hand again, fingers woven together. 

“It gets easier to breathe,” he whispers.

Then he’s holding David tight against his body, hands scratching and rubbing wherever they can find tension, soothing, smoothing. If there is a spot in the hollow of David’s neck that is designed for Patrick, it seems the reverse is also true of Patrick’s shoulder. David rests there, breathing, feeling the softness of the ground, feeling grounded for the first time in years. Patrick leans his head against David’s and repeats the same thing over and over:

“I’ll be here. I’m here. I’m right here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s not nice to put dear sweet Clint and Marcy in limbo like this. I'm sorry. There are Reasons. Rest assured, Patrick will get a definitive answer about his parents before we’re done. It is my sincere hope that you will be satisfied with the way Patrick finds out what happened to them. 
> 
> I went back and forth with how much Patrick could experience in Bunker 8 and still be recognizable as himself. I think one thing that makes Patrick as a character so compelling is the way he embraces the freedom he finds in Schitt’s Creek. Beyond the David of it all, I've always been interested in the idea that in SC he can control and define his own narrative for the first time in his life. I chose that palpable sense of freedom as my jumping off point and took some liberties along the way.


	5. Take these sunken eyes and learn to see

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and Chapter 6 (forthcoming) are 87 percent happy times to show how grateful I am you're still with me.
> 
> We meet a character named Roland in this second half of this chapter. Without overexplaining, I’ll just say this is not really meant to be a statement about the character in general on the show. SC Roland just happens to share one or two obvious characteristics with the Roland in this story, and the name stuck.

In the three weeks since his first time upstairs, David has almost, not quite, adjusted to the way the light looks, dulling the red brick building in front of them to a medium brown. The windows on the first floor are boarded up, the edges of the boards starting to succumb to the elements. There are volunteer saplings growing around the building, scrubby plants and weeds happily taking over the vacant sidewalks and parking lot. The grass is long and brittle, crunching under their feet as they walk. He is impressed, actually, to see so much growth. It’s not exactly flourishing, but David likes how resilient the world is, despite everything.

“What were you like in high school?” Patrick asks as he uses his pocket multi-tool to unfasten the bolts holding the door closed at the back of the structure. Patrick has decided to MacGyver his way in so they can explore it a little bit.

“Oh, you definitely don’t want to know about my high school experience,” David says, pulling down the bandana he wears outside while he adjusts to the air quality and tucking it into his pocket.

“I want to know,” Patrick replies, insistent.

“What were you like in high school?” David deflects.

“I asked you first.”

Patrick gets the last bolt free and slides another piece of the multi-tool out to pry open the door. It comes loose with a scrape of metal on metal followed by a long, eerie creek as it swings open. Patrick steps inside, and David follows.

It’s late on a Saturday morning. David has been spending longer and longer stretches upstairs, but today is the first time they will try to stay up here for most of the day. The silos are located about four miles from the center of town. Now that the whole group has been upstairs, they’ve been using a training area Patrick set up near the bunker. On Saturdays, Patrick has started taking David farther afield. They haven’t made it to the old town center where Patrick lives yet, but this building is definitely the farthest David has been from Bunker 13. If this goes well, Patrick is talking about trying an overnight next weekend. 

There is no reason this day shouldn’t go well, David thinks. David has a number of anxieties about moving upstairs for good, but being upstairs, especially being up here with Patrick, has made living in the silo feel claustrophobic in a way it hasn’t since his first year there. Still, it’s claustrophobia with a welcome side of electricity and plumbing.

They cross through a small hallway into a large gymnasium. The light filters in through glass block high on the walls. The wood floor is covered with a layer of dust, so the painted lines of the court are just visible through the film.

“So are you going to tell me, or should I guess?” Patrick asks, scrubbing at the dust with his foot to see the logo in the center of the floor. It’s a lightning bolt, which makes them both smile. 

“Tell you what?” David asks. 

“David.” Patrick is obviously not going to give up on this. “What were you like in high school?”

David considers the question.

“Well, to the extent that I attended high school, you would have found me in the lighting booth at the back of the auditorium with the other candy ravers.”

“Were you into fashion back then?” Patrick asks.

“Yes, always. And I had a very chic asymmetrical haircut,” David says, grinning.

“Which side was longer?” Patrick asks, turning to put his arms around David’s waist. 

“This one,” David says, twisting a lock out of his high pompadour and pulling it down and to the left, almost over his eye. Patrick laughs and slides his hand over David’s, catching the hair between his own fingers and attempting to tuck it back in place. If he spends a little extra time fussing with the placement just to feel David’s hair in his hands, neither of them call attention to it. 

He lets his hand brush David’s cheek on the way down, tracing his cheekbone with his thumb as he leans in to kiss him softly on the corner of his mouth, and then again more on center. They are Patrick’s sweet, chaste kisses, which he has discovered are an effective tool to work David up. It’s a tease, really, a hint of his smell and his taste and his texture, but not nearly enough to satisfy. Which is why it always makes David chase after him for more. The kisses have a hundred percent success rate, and this time is no exception. David finds Patrick’s mouth and sucks his lower lip as he chases Patrick's tongue. Patrick moans at the same time he his pulls David to his groin, hands reaching into David's back pockets. 

"When you said try things in your bed, I don't think I realized your bed was so far away," David mutters, dipping his forehead to Patrick's shoulder, panting a little. He's still figuring out how to breathe the thick air when his mouth is occupied with Patrick's.

Patrick shakes with laughter against him and has to spend more time pushing David’s mussed hair back into an approximately correct placement. David attempts to help Patrick do the same. Patrick got a haircut the day before while Ted spent time with all of the trainees reviewing medicinal plants. It’s still long enough for David to enjoy getting his hands into, but much tidier than before. He looks so fucking good that it has been hard for David to keep his hands to himself since he saw it for the first time two hours ago. 

When Patrick said slow, David didn’t realize he meant excruciatingly slow. The steady beat of want-want-want inside him grows louder every time they are together. David can tell Patrick feels it too and not just because he says so almost daily. His body communicates almost as clearly as his words. Patrick’s office is the only private space they have, and it’s not really large enough to maneuver. Now that they have been spending more time upstairs, they’ve found opportunities to put hands in new places. But David is attached to giving Patrick more than a hasty jacking against an abandoned building. 

What David wants most is to fuck Patrick on a bed where he can do it properly, giving his attention to the man with him instead of whatever hard surface is jabbing into his thigh or requiring a careful balancing act. Even if Alexis could be convinced to give them a few hours on Tier 7, his parents and the door that doesn’t lock are an ever-present threat. Stevie even offered her chamber for a daytime tryst, but she’s on Tier 5 and David is not sure he wants to explore new territory with Patrick somewhere Patrick feels so on edge. Selfishly, he wants Patrick’s full attention. David hopes by next weekend they can make it all the way to Patrick’s place before they both go mad. 

“You’re not off the hook,” David says as they leave the gym and walk down a dim corridor, lockers on both sides. Most lockers hang at varying degrees of open. Someone has clearly already been through the building and taken anything of value.

“What’s your best guess?” Patrick asks.

“Student council treasurer. Hockey team. Probably had a bunch of bros that called you ‘Brewsky.’ Very popular with the girls. How am I doing so far?”

“Baseball not hockey. And it was Brewster—”

“Brewster?”

“Yes. Like rooster with a B. On account of locker room appreciation for my big cock.”

“Oh my fucking god,” David says, appalled. “They _ were _ bros.”

“Yeah. They were very classy. Also, I was the vice president, not the treasurer. And I wouldn’t really know about the girls because I dated the same one from eighth grade until Thanksgiving of my first year of college.”

“Who broke up with who?”

“We dated on and off for several more years, so we both got a shot.”

“Sounds very romantic,” David says dryly.

“It had its moments,” Patrick replies, noncommittal.

“What about you? I’m looking to fester in a pit of jealousy over whoever got to be your first,” Patrick says, wandering into an open science classroom. He hops up to sit on one of the counters, and David fits himself easily between his knees. 

“Well, let’s see,” David starts, sliding his hands up Patrick’s thighs. “Several of my firsts were with a Pisces named Jade who was a year ahead of me. When she broke up with me, she said she enjoyed sucking my pacifier necklace more than my cock. So I think it’s safe to say I started strong.”

Patrick laughs, a rush of breath hot against David’s neck as he scratches his nose fondly against David's stubble. 

“Well even though I haven’t gotten as much time with him as I’d like, I would take your cock over a pacifier necklace any day.” 

“Mm, good. I’d like to say the same, but it’s been so long I wouldn’t know for sure.”

“That memorable, huh?” Patrick asks. 

David grins back at him. Shrugs.

“I’m just going through a lot right now. There are a lot of new things to keep track of.” 

“Mm, I see,” Patrick says with another brief kiss. “Did you and Jade ever fool around in the school?”

“No, we didn’t. She wasn’t into public or semi-public stuff. I did give my first blowjob in the storage closet of the band room, though.” David tugs back and forth on the string of Patrick’s hooded sweatshirt until Patrick kisses him again, soft and warm against his lips.

“Now that does make me a little jealous.” Patrick smiles nervously, biting the inside of his lower lip, still swollen from David’s earlier attentions.

“I’m a lot better at it now.” David’s hands return to Patrick’s thighs, fingers kneading lightly into his hips. “Want me to show you?”

“Could be fun to rewrite the past a little bit.” Patrick sounds calm but his heaving chest gives him away. 

“Where can I go?” David asks, close, lips whispering against Patrick’s. 

“Everywhere. Anywhere,” Patrick rasps, hands heavy on David's shoulders, hot even through his clothes. 

“That's not very specific,” David says, grinning into another kiss. David is not sure how he's managing to stay calm, because Patrick is starting to grab at his skin, his hair, his pants, whatever he can find to haul him closer.

"David, please stop talking and suck my dick."

"There, was that so hard?”

Patrick responds by crushing their mouths together again, tongue sliding across as he surges into David.

While David keeps Patrick's mouth occupied, he glides his hands up Patrick's body, pressing into his nipples and under his hooded sweatshirt, sliding it off his shoulders. Patrick's eyes go dark as David strokes the veins of his wrists, sliding the cuffs of the sweatshirt off one at a time. David takes his time flicking his tongue against the hollow of Patrick's neck as he guides him slowly backwards onto his forearms. Well acquainted with awkward positions thanks to their circumstances, David manages to get the sweatshirt under him and free Patrick's semi-hard cock with only a little difficulty. Then he finally, finally gets his first mouthful of Patrick. David’s tongue explores the salty tang of precome, the pleasant weight of Patrick’s length as he swirls and sucks. Patrick’s cock hardens quickly, and David hums against the swell of Patrick in his mouth.

David kneads his fingers along Patrick’s skin, down his back, fingertips just barely breaching his crack, smiling at the way Patrick's breath hitches. The edge of David's tongue makes slow circles around the tip, long drags against the length. Most of Patrick's skin is worn from exposure to the world, but his cock is gloriously smooth against his lips as David bobs up and down. A contradiction.

“Fuck, David." Patrick's fingers press against the counter as the back of David's tongue presses against the top of Patrick’s shaft, sucking hard.

Patrick starts babbling half thoughts, half words even. This man is the only person David knows who seems to have a grip on this world. So it’s exhilarating to put hands on him, mouth on him, until he’s whiny and pleading for more, more, more. David takes him deeper, gives him everything he can.

“Now,” Patrick warns, like it's the only word he can find. He jerks forward as he comes, his thighs squeezing around David. David gentles his pace, sucking and swallowing until he has it all. 

The solid heat of Patrick turns molten, and he slides off the counter. He nuzzles into the hollow of David's neck and wraps his arms tight around it, hanging on, breathing hard.

"Did I lose you?" David asks.

"God this mouth of yours doesn't stop," Patrick chuckles into his shoulder.

David watches him as he puts himself back together. Patrick looks so relaxed, body moving purposefully still but slow and easy. David feels good knowing he can do that for him. To him. Patrick looks up and catches David watching. He just swallows and shakes his head, reaching out to smooth David's sweater across his chest and over his shoulders.

"I like you like this," he says quietly.

“Like what?” David asks with a smirk, still a little hoarse. "Freshly fucked?" 

Patrick's smile flashes across his face, but he turns sincere again.

“No just— Today it seems like you’re just . . . yourself?” Patrick tries, hand splayed over David's heart. “We haven’t known each other that long. Maybe I’m projecting.”

“No,” David says softly, covering Patrick's hand with his own. “I’m— I’m just me. With you.”

\-----

After another hour, they have explored most of the school. As they talk, they share the mixed nuts and apples they brought. Near the gym they find a door that looks like it hasn’t been opened recently, so Patrick uses another part of his multitool to pick the lock. The room is full of sporting equipment.

“So wait, did I miss anything about high school Patrick?” David asks as they walk in, realizing Patrick never really answered the question other than to make the small corrections to David’s assumptions.

“I started a Future Business Leaders of North America chapter.”

“You were a busy little bee, huh? Honor roll?”

“Every year,” Patrick says, smiling ruefully. “I’m not sure I like how predictable I am.”

“Okay, what’s something about high school Patrick that would surprise me?” David asks. 

“I starred in the school musical three years in a row,” Patrick says. It works. David is surprised.

“My god. He sings and dances, too?” David says. He goes for a swirl of condescension and genuine awe, and Patrick smiles. It’s starting to feel like everything about him makes Patrick smile. It’s a good feeling, especially given what Patrick has been through. He wants to be a person who makes Patrick's face light up this way.

“Singing, yes. Dancing . . . well enough to fake it,” Patrick hedges.

“Which shows?”

“Let’s see. The usuals. _ Guys and Dolls. Anything Goes. Oklahoma_.”

Patrick picks up a baseball glove from a box in the corner and puts it on, testing the stiffness of the leather.

“Which of the roles were you in baseball?” David asks. Patrick’s lips curl down into one of his contradictory smiles. He drops the glove and tries another one.

“I was a catcher,” Patrick says casually. David knows exactly one sports innuendo and it’s that one.

“Were you any good?” David asks casually.

“See in baseball, it’s not just about catching. The catcher also has to communicate with the pitcher through hand signals. I’d like to think my free hand was just as good as the one in the catcher’s mitt. But— we should probably get going.” 

Patrick takes the glove off his hand and pats David’s ass with it on the way out of the storage room.

“One blowjob and suddenly Brewster’s a cocky little shit,” David gripes once they’re out in the hallway. 

Patrick laughs. It’s hard to tell in the dim light, but it looks like his cheeks are pink. David presses a thumb into one of them as he kisses him, and sure enough, the small thumbprint stays white for a minute before returning to a rosy flush.

“We really do need to head out,” Patrick says. “It’s a long walk back and we don’t have equipment to do it in the dark.”

“It’s kind of strange, if you think about this building never being used again . . . just sitting here empty,” David says, realizing suddenly what the dust and the empty lockers and the unused sporting equipment really means.

“I used to feel that way all the time,” Patrick says, nodding. “Seeing how fast things are coming back though . . . People will have to start migrating to wherever resources are still intact, and that includes buildings. Schools. We’re lucky to have all of this standing and mostly undamaged.”

Patrick has tried to spin the new world in various positive ways, but this is the first time he has used that word. Lucky. And it’s not spin this time. He means it. 

David stops at a locker and studies the photographs pinned inside. They’re almost all of the same two girls, one with chin-length brown hair and freckles, the other with a long black braid. He knows he shouldn’t assume, but they look like they are in love. David closes the locker carefully, lifting the latch so it slides into place as quietly as possible. It feels better, somehow, to separate them from the vacant, echoing corridor and the voided world beyond. He does the same with the entire bank of lockers. Patrick is leaning up against the last locker in the line, watching him. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asks. 

David smiles shyly, eyes following his finger as he traces the curve of the latch to the locker he has just closed. 

“Do you think there’s such a thing as boyfriends or girlfriends in this world?” David asks. He sees Patrick inhale sharply out of the corner of his eye.

“Jesus, I hope so,” he says on a breath. “We should keep as many of the good things as we can.”

“Can I tell someone you’re my boyfriend?” David asks, turning, needing to see his face. It’s earnest and open. 

Patrick kisses him, quickly, soundly, and pulls him into a tight hug. 

“Yeah,” he husks into David’s neck. “Tell everyone I’m your boyfriend.” 

\-----

The following Friday afternoon, David circles the motorcycle dubiously. They are standing outside the large garage above the Cube. It’s built into the earth, which rises up and over both sides of the entrance. The door itself, featuring a red number 13 extending the full height of it, is set into a tall concrete wall. The shallow rise of the dome is visible beyond, the only part of the silo itself that is exposed. A tall chain link fence surrounds the complex, stretching from either side of the garage door and enclosing the scrubby grass around the dome. David remembers the day they drove up to the fence and through the gate, remembers thinking it bore a vague similarity to a prison yard. 

“Can’t we just walk?” David asks, studying the dusty machine, a black and silver assembly of parts with a golden yellow fuel tank and fender.

“It’s a pretty long walk and then we’ll have to spend all our time walking instead of other more fun things,” Patrick says pointedly. “You survived the end of the world, David. If fate decides to take you out with a puttering, biodiesel-fueled motorcycle, someone out there has a pretty sick sense of humor.”

“Hm, very funny,” he says. “And this is yours? Your motorcycle?”

“Yes. There’s a mechanic, Bob, who makes the biofuel and converted the engines. Ray has a few of them that we share for coming back and forth to the silos.” 

“And this is our only option for transportation?” David asks. 

“Would you rather it was a horse?”

“Maybe. Are there horses?”

“Do you see any horses?” Patrick asks, chasing down the last of his patience and clinging to it with white knuckles. 

He’s a little worried about how this will go, and David’s attitude isn’t helping. Patrick usually doesn’t mind when David has to be dragged into something he doesn’t want to do. It’s fun to watch him put up a fight. It’s fun to see how much fun he has putting up a fight. But it has been a week since they labeled what is happening between them and finally, _ finally _they’re going to have some goddamn privacy to do something about it besides exchanging longing looks and suggestive jokes and getting each other off against the nearest stable surface. 

“So that’s a no on horses.” David folds his arms and looks around, and then back at the motorcycle warily. Patrick manages to turn a sigh into a normal exhale.

Patrick zips up his blue-gray jacket, the one he wore specifically because David said once he liked the narrower fit of it, even if he followed that up by implying the rest of Patrick’s “mountaineering” clothes were less than ideal. 

“Well I guess I can go spend the night in my bed, and you can spend the night in yours,” Patrick says. He gives him an intentionally cool goodbye peck on the cheek and swings a leg over the motorcycle. 

“Okay fine. What is this thing, anyway?” David says.

“A modified Ducati Scrambler.”

“If I were you, I would have made up a different name.”

“Scrambler just means it’s designed to off-road if we need to.”

“That’s not helping.”

“You can wear my helmet,” Patrick offers.

“I think it’s probably better for the future of civilization if you wear the helmet, just in case,” David says. 

“David—”

“Hey, Patrick, wait up,” Ted calls out, emerging from the garage and interrupting Patrick’s almost-scolding. “I found that guy in Elmdale.”

“Oh? Maybe we should talk about it tomorrow,” Patrick says with a nervous flick of his eyes towards David.

“Well there won’t be much to talk about. He said he wants something before he talks and he didn’t want anything I could give him.”

Patrick taps his fingers against the crest of the helmet he’s still holding and tries to sneak another look at David, tries to gather how interested he is in this. He wants to wait to talk to David about this particular side project when he knows what he wants to say, when he has more information, and ideally not right before their first opportunity to get more than a few hours alone together.

“What does he want?” Patrick asks finally. Ted obviously wants to divulge all his intel so his brain can move on to the next thing. It’s not like he can send an email. Patrick would feel the same way in his position. 

“Well he had a number of things he wants, although most of it isn’t something you’re going to want to give him without even knowing what he might be able to do for you. But he said he’d do it for free if someone goes with him.”

“What’s your read on the guy?”

“I think the stories are probably true. Or partially at least. If it were me, I’d go by myself before I went with him.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, his shoulders falling. “Thanks, Ted.” 

Ted squeezes Patrick’s arm kindly.

“Hey buddy,” Ted says, nodding at David like he’s just noticed him. 

“Hey. Ted,” David says tightly.

“Hey, you should borrow my helmet,” Ted says, assessing the situation. 

“Aren’t you going to need it?” Patrick asks. He can fight with David about which of them is more important to civilization but as the closest thing to a field doctor they have, Ted is pretty crucial. 

“Well since Tier 7 is down one resident tonight, I’m checking into the motel, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ll remind you this is my sister we’re talking about,” David says, and Ted cancels the gesture he’s starting to make with his hands.

“Sorry, buddy. Let me go get that helmet.” 

“Alexis’s bed is kinda small. Think they’re using yours?” Patrick asks as Ted jogs back towards the bunker.

“If you want to keep calling me your boyfriend, you will not talk about him and my sister in my bed.”

“Well is my boyfriend done freaking out about the motorcycle? Because I sort of had a plan for my bed tonight.”

“Um, I think ’freaking out’ is a bit strong? But yes, fine. I’ll ride the Scramble.” David says with a pained roll of his eyes and a shake of his hands like they’re wet and the paper towel roll is empty.

“It’s a Scrambler. You know, you might like it.”

“Hey what was that about before?” David asks. Patrick tries to control his face.

“Oh, just something I’m—” he’s about to say _ doing for Ray_, but that’s a lie. This stopped being for Ray weeks ago. “I want to tell you about it soon, okay? But I want to have more information before I do.”

“Is this what you disappear for sometimes?” David asks.

“Yes.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Not so far. There’s a possibility it could be. Can I promise to tell you before it gets to that point?”

“Mmkay,” David says, hesitant. He climbs on gingerly behind Patrick.

“But Ted knows.”

“Yeah. He’s helping me.”

“Are you guys . . . Like is he your best friend or something?” David asks. Patrick can see David’s fighting a little jealousy. He considers his answer.

“I don’t think we have enough in common to be friends,” Patrick starts carefully. “I think it’s closer and more complicated than that, given what we’ve been through together. He’s— he’s more like a brother.”

David twists his mouth and looks off towards the pine trees on the edge of the clearing around the bunker. Before he can respond, Ted reemerges.

“Here you go!” Ted says cheerfully, plunking the helmet on David’s head without warning. “Have a _wheely_ good time!”

Whatever David says is muffled by the visor, but Patrick can get the gist of it from his body language. He stifles a laugh. 

“Thanks, Ted.” Patrick says, flipping down the shield on his helmet.

“Sure thing. See you tomorrow.”

Patrick waves at him and kicks the motorcycle to life.

“You’ll want to hold on,” he shouts over the staccato turning of the motor. David wraps his arms snugly around Patrick and they take off.

\-----

The road is a little rough and lined with mostly pine trees, tall and bare at the base so the forest beneath them looks like an open field of columns. It’s a bright day, relatively speaking, although according to Patrick the clouds never disperse enough to see the sun. Still, everything looks a little more vibrant today. 

As Patrick turns and picks up speed on a smoother, wider road, it’s . . . like flying, actually. It’s exhilarating. The feel of Patrick, strong and capable and solid against him. The feel of air moving over his skin. The way the scenery blurs and feels less foreign for it.

_ Puttering. _ That’s how Patrick described the motorcycle. And okay, they’re not going that fast, but it’s the fastest David has moved through space in more than four years. It’s the first time he hasn’t felt completely at the mercy of nature, like maybe he gets to make his own fucking choice about his destiny after all.

By the time Patrick parks the motorcycle behind a small two-story building, David’s insides feel like they might vibrate right out of his skin. He’s not sure if it’s because he has spent the last twenty minutes in a full body press against his action hero boyfriend or the rumbling of the rehabbed motorcycle over uneven pavement, but it hardly matters. When David attempts to dismount, his legs give out and Patrick has to catch him, nearly toppling the bike in the process.

“Whoa, you okay?” Patrick asks, steadying David with a hand and a wide smile. “It’s a little soon to be falling for me.”

“Who taught you how to flirt? A nineties high school movie?” he gripes as he removes his helmet. He fluffs his hair self-consciously—it tends to go wavy in the humidity—and looks around, taking in the little town center. He had imagined a main street but it’s really just an intersection with a few buildings scattered in four directions amidst the houses. Meager trees poke up out of the yards, grass long and gone to seed. They are standing at the side of a fairly old red brick building with a gabled roof.

“Sorry. I saw Ted use that line once and always wanted to try it.” Patrick swings off the bike and kicks down the stand.

“Ohmigod. So you’re not only using bad pick-up lines, but you’re recycling them from Ted?”

“I guess. You know we all help each other out up here. Teach each other our skills,” Patrick says, grinning.

“Well, Mr. Brewer, I expect and deserve original content from now on.”

“Noted,” Patrick says. “How’s this: You look smart. Why don’t you come upstairs and teach me something new?”

“Still awful, but it seems to be working anyway. Or maybe it’s still the motorcycle and you haven’t quite ruined it with your mouth.”

“Oh trust me David, I’m definitely going to ruin it with my mouth.” Patrick gives him a smolder for a minute before breaking into a grin. “How was that one?”

“Solid B,” David gripes.

“Well that won’t do. I want to make Honor Roll.”

“Then you’ll have to work harder.”

“Is that a challenge?” Patrick asks, pulling David closer with a finger along the inside of his waistband. 

“I think a B will get you everywhere you want to go tonight,” David says after pretending to consider it. He still feels like he hasn’t recovered from the motorcycle. He can’t stop taking in Patrick, who he is starting to realize, seems a little bit more _ Patrick _ now that they’re at his home. On the other hand the more David leaves the bunker, the more he feels like there is a past David and a future David and they are screaming at each other across a bottomless chasm. 

Patrick looks like he’s thinking up another cheesy line when a furry mass starts racing towards them from the old auto repair garage across the street.

“Holy fuck!” David says, leaping towards Patrick.

“Roland ho!” Patrick says sternly. The beast pulls up short, panting, whining. It’s a dog, David realizes. It’s a gangly, mangy mass of long bones and lean muscles and wiry white and gray fur. He’s tall, probably the tallest dog David has ever seen in person. The dog does a full body wag, his tail and head going in opposite directions, pulling his body back and forth in a slithering curve between them. Patrick reaches in his pocket and the dog sits so fast David is sure he has injured his tail. Patrick pulls out a little bit of . . . something—David can’t tell what it is—and tosses it to the mongrel, who catches it neatly out of the air. 

“Good boy, buddy. Sorry I’m home so late,” Patrick says, crouching in front of the dog and scratching behind his ears. Thankfully, the dog refrains from licking Patrick’s face. 

“Wait, is this your dog?” David asks. 

“Not really. Roland stays with me quite a bit, but he mostly goes where the food is. We call him the mayor ’cause he moves around town like he runs the place. He’s pretty useful for hunting. And intimidating when he wants to be.”

“He’s very big,” David agrees, scrunching his face, not entirely pleased to learn about Patrick’s furry friend who is getting a level of energetic attention from Patrick’s hands that David hoped would be directed at him by now.

“He’s part Irish Wolfhound. Miguel says he’s not big enough to be full-bred.”

“Miguel?” The name causes the dog to stand and bark once, a stunning echo through the eerily quiet landscape.

“He was a vet, before. Still is, I guess. He raises sheep and helps with the goats and chickens. Anyway he’s been keeping his ear to the ground for another dog to breed with him.”

“Just imagine. There could be little Roland Juniors roaming around,” David says with feigned enthusiasm. 

“Not much action these days is there buddy? I bet you’d have a lot of fun making puppies,” Patrick says, his scratches moving under the dog’s chin and across his back. 

“Speaking of the relatively few opportunities for sex these days . . . ” David starts. Patrick turns to him, grinning, still crouched on the ground.

“Is that the best you can do?” As much as David loves that grin, his patience is gone. 

“He’s very cute, but I wanted to spend time with another friend of yours.”

“C-plus,” Patrick says, giving Roland one final pat. Apparently not realizing he has been dismissed, Roland takes up a position by Patrick’s side and waits for further instructions. 

“Um, is he coming?” David asks.

“Roland, shoo,” Patrick says. Roland whines and sits next to Patrick. Patrick gives him another morsel of whatever is in his pocket and pats his head again. He looks apologetically at David. 

“He doesn’t like to leave until it’s his idea. He just wants dinner. I promise I’ll make sure he stays out here for the rest.”

“Okay,” David says, eyeing the dog warily as his pants get a little tighter at the mention of _ the rest_.

“So . . . you want a tour before dinner?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Patrick takes him through the side door up a flight of stairs to a big open room under the gable of the building. Roland parks himself on a small braided rug near the top of the stairs, a panting grin on his face like he is the missing piece of the whole arrangement, slotting into place for final inspection. The floors in the space are weathered wood, the plaster an antique cream, continuing up the canted ceiling between thick rafters. The plaster is delaminating and missing in spots, revealing the brick wall behind it. 

Patrick’s bed is nestled under the gable between the two front windows looking out over the street. It’s a simple wrought iron frame with a decent mattress. There is a worn patchwork quilt at the foot of the bed, which is made with warm gray sheets. A small metal cart serves as a night stand.

A long, double-sided, walnut chest of drawers separates the sleeping area from the rest of the room. In the middle of the room, near Roland’s rug, a stout rocking chair is draped with another quilt. There’s a guitar leaning against the wall behind it, missing all but two strings. A wood table and two chairs are arranged neatly in the corner by the stairs. Above the door at the top of the stairs, near a rack of outerwear, Patrick's rifle is mounted to the wall. 

There isn’t really a kitchen—David has learned that most cooking has to happen outside over fire—but there is a deep shelf with an odd assortment of things arranged, apparently, randomly: several books, jars of preserved fruits and vegetables, two cast iron pans and a large stock pot, a crock with a smattering of cooking utensils, a wood box full of candles, yellowed airtight containers of various sizes holding different dried beans and grains, the baseball glove he took from the school a week prior, an assortment of coffee mugs, four plates in different styles, three jigsaw puzzles, a toolbox, Trivial Pursuit Beatles Collector’s Edition (_oh god_), a metal cup with a toothbrush and straight-blade razor propped up inside it, and a tall stack of towels. 

A few photos and a small poster hang on the wall between the shelf and the dresser. David walks closer to inspect them. The poster is for the Cedar Grove High School production of _ Guys and Dolls_. It’s a photocopy on light blue paper of a hand drawn design, a blackened New York City skyline cutting off the bottom of the name of the production. Below the skyline is a list of the cast members with their roles, positioned among the obligatory dice. To David’s delight, two of the Polaroids they took on their first date are tucked into the edge of the frame. 

“Sky Masterson?” David says, grinning. “You played the gambling man who wants to corrupt the missionary?” 

“Mmm. Come all ye repenters and let me bring a little sin into your life,” Something about the way Patrick says it, with a little eye roll and a lot of heat, makes David think maybe he’s not the action hero at all. Maybe he’s the villain here, and David has entered his lair. Somehow that’s just as appealing.

“I feel like that deserves an F for recycled content, but other parts of me are saying A-plus.”

“Good to know,” Patrick says lightly, but he’s still got that look like there is a plan to devour more than dinner tonight. David wants to be devoured. Now. Yesterday. He’s not sure if they’re still going slow, not sure if they should talk about speeding things up. So he turns back to the photos.

“You look—” _ Like them_, he’s about to say, but he stops because _ them _is obviously Patrick’s parents. There’s a picture of just the three of them, and one below it with some extended family members. The ruddy curls, the sturdier build, the simple joy of knowing what family means are peppered across the small crowd of faces.

“We should start dinner before it gets too late,” Patrick says. 

Without waiting for David he heads downstairs, taking them two at a time. Roland rambles down behind him. David wishes he knew more about Patrick’s parents, about his time in Bunker 8, about everything Patrick has been through that might result in David accidentally hitting a pressure point. But Patrick seems to think their conversation under the dome was sufficient, that it’s behind them. David doesn’t blame him, exactly, for holding back. The last thing Patrick needs is a former socialite hanger-on who he has to take care of all the time. Some part of Patrick must know that, even if he acts like he’s all in.

David comes down to find that Patrick has started dinner. There’s a wood picnic table outside in the small yard. It used to be mostly paved, it looks like, but the pavement is cracked and crumbling and plants have undertaken the project of filling in the cracks, a greenery-grouted crazing now spread across the ground. The entire back half is a garden. A clothesline stretches from a hook on the back wall to the corner fence post. Another construction near the building corner, this one made with recycled plastic privacy fencing, surrounds a short platform. A rain barrel is mounted above it. There are two spigots, one that looks like a showerhead, and one that’s attached to pipe coming down to a faucet above an old concrete utility sink. On the table, Patrick has a cracked plastic tote of supplies which he’s transforming into pizza. 

_ Pizza. _ David has been thinking about pizza all week as they talked about this first overnight. David still has the I.O.U. with the sketch, but he didn’t want to pressure Patrick to make good on his promise. Patrick obviously does not need reminding. Of course he doesn’t. Patrick doesn’t so much as scratch the back of his head without intention. So here he is, making good on promised pizza. 

Patrick has a flame started in a carbuncled wood-fire oven. It is assembled from various shapes and sizes of concrete block and brick, dry stacked together. An old radiator has been laid on its side over the fire, built in to the brick-block structure to serve as the cooking surface. In what shouldn’t be a surprise but is, Patrick already has the ingredients separated into a mish-mash of bowls and containers, something he must have done before coming to pick David up.

“Can I help with something?” David asks.

“I’m good. Have a seat.”

David sits on the other side of the table so he can watch.

“So tell me what you’re doing.”

“Well, this is a spelt flour,” he says, forming the mixture into a ball and then using an empty de-labeled wine bottle to roll it out on a flour-dusted cutting board. 

David gets a little lost in the way Patrick’s hands push and curl around the wine bottle. They’re blunt-fingered and dry and rough, and David has no idea why everything he watches those hands do makes him hot and hard.

“Spelt is heartier and does better with dry soil than wheat. One of the farmers is trying to get a big crop of it going. You combine it with honey and water and oil or lard for the crust. It doesn’t have any yeast in it, so it’s not really a great pizza crust, but it tastes okay.” 

Setting the rolled out crust on the baking sheet, Patrick pulls a small jar of tomatoes out of the bin. It’s one of those jars with the rubber seal and metal clasp on the lid, which he springs. David jumps when the lid opens with a sharp pop. David’s not sure he’ll ever get used to how small sounds ricochet in this hollowed world. 

“So do you . . . jar your own stuff too?” David asks. They’d just started learning about preserving food and he can’t remember the terms. 

Patrick smiles down at his hands which are wielding a fork like it’s an extension of his fingers, scooping a few tomatoes out of the jar, turning them into a pulpy mash on the cutting board.

“I do some canning. Mostly Darlene—she lives a few blocks over—does it for me. Everyone kind of has their own things they like, so we try to help each other out.”

“What’s your thing?” David asks. There’s so much David wants to ask, wants to know, but he’ll take whatever he can get of Patrick talking like this, like David is worth the time, worth the explanation.

“My thing is recruiting more help,” Patrick says, pausing his busy hands to spare a grin in David’s direction.

“What do you think my thing will be?”

“You’re coming along with the crossbow,” Patrick says.

“Yeah I just don’t see myself enjoying it as much when I’m shooting at something that’s not a circle.”

“Not a lot of circles living out of captivity,” Patrick agrees gently. “I’m not a huge fan of hunting myself. If it hadn’t been a necessity when I first came upstairs, I probably would’ve avoided it entirely.”

“Oh,” David says, surprised. It makes him feel a little better that Patrick has things up here he doesn’t like, would rather not do.

“I liked that blanket you made,” Patrick tries again. “We should have wool from the sheep this year, and Jake’s working with one of the farmers to build a spinning wheel. Maybe you can do something with that.” 

Of course fucking Jake and his carpentry skills already have a place up here. David tries to push the thought away. 

David’s been looking forward to this night all week, but now that it’s happening, he is realizing it’s very different than a day out with a prepacked picnic. Patrick lives up here, has a whole life up here. And life upstairs takes work and cooperation and coordination and a lot of other things David is suddenly realizing he doesn’t even like, much less have a natural inclination for. If he lived up here, he wouldn't be able to pack supplies from the commissary or clean the dirt off his body and let it run down the shower drain. He doesn’t really understand anything about upstairs. And every time David thinks he’s starting to understand Patrick, he is shown another of his scars that won’t heal.

“Maybe,” is as much of a commitment as David will make to the prospect of doing something with wool. 

Patrick’s hands are mincing basil into the sauce and spreading it over the crust on the baking sheet. 

Knitting isn’t a terrible idea, David considers. He kind of liked making the blanket. But he doesn’t really like the visual of sitting up in that little room knitting in the rocker while Patrick, Ted, Ronnie, Jake—and god, maybe even Alexis—go off to play _ Guardians of the Galaxy _ every day. 

“What do you think you’d be good at?” Patrick asks.

“Is there a need for trend forecasting?”

“What, like Farmer’s Almanac type stuff?”

“What’s Farmer’s Almanac?” David asks, confused.

“Or did you mean something else?” Patrick asks, equally confused.

“No, it wasn’t a real idea.” 

“Oh. Okay,” Patrick says.

He looks up from his hands and right at David. It’s the same look he gives the compass when they are navigating, like he’s trying to see which way the needle is pointing in David’s brain. David hopes he can’t see it spinning wildly, unable to latch on to any direction. 

The unearthly quiet messes with his focus. David’s mind digs up all types of forgotten details to fill the void. Last week, as he was practicing tying different knots, his overactive brain composed an entire alternate version of _ Downton Abbey _ where Sybil and Matthew survive. The day before, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” tortured him from within. He’s never liked the song, _ really _ doesn’t like it now, and yet he’d spent half the day making up his own verses and muttering the chorus under his breath. 

“Can you hand me the goat cheese?” Patrick asks. David looks in the bin next to him grabs the small lidded container. 

Patrick uses the fork to spread the cheese around the pizza. He adds a few more uncrushed tomatoes on top and wipes his hand on a towel. 

“I think we’re ready,” he says. 

They talk a little, touch a little, while the pizza cooks. David helps Patrick clean up the items he used to make it. The conversation continues easily over dinner, although it takes some effort for Patrick to keep it going through David’s groans of appreciation for the meal. David’s sure he’s had a better pizza but right now he can’t remember where that might have been. 

Patrick saved some cheese aside in the container for Roland, who chomps each sliver happily with a sticky, smacking cadence that David tries not to hear. A gust of wind catches the empty container and blows it into the garden.

“Did you feel that?” Patrick asks, standing up on the bench so he can see over the fence.

“The breeze?” David asks.

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve felt one like this since I came upstairs,” he says, a little dazed. It’s equal parts unsettling and appealing the way his body coils, ready to interpret the motives of the wind. 

“A storm?” David asks.

“It’s not a storm,” he says, hopping down off the bench. “This feels different.”

Patrick stands in the yard, turning as the breeze picks up again, catching the leaves of the white birch tree at the back of the lot. The atmosphere is suddenly full of the blustering wind, the rustling of leaves, the creek of branches. It blows cool against David’s face, the sound replacing the weight of the air in the space around him.

Roland stands too, matching Patrick’s alertness, nose to the air. Then he shakes his body vigorously and wanders off in search of a second dinner. 

"It's good, I think," Patrick decides, watching Roland saunter away unfazed. 

At last they’re alone in the fading gray light, air twisting gently around them.

David realizes, amid growing darkness, that having the dog around was reassuring. His size and teeth and claws and twitching ears felt like protection. He feels prone now, without the animal’s keen ability to sense every shift of their surroundings. As capable as he knows Patrick to be, it’s the first time he’ll be sleeping without the protection of several feet of concrete and armed guards. He hugs himself reflexively. 

“Hey, you okay?” Patrick asks, sitting back down. 

“Can you guarantee I’ll survive the night?” David blurts. He feels a little silly but also relieved to say it out loud.

“That’s not a guarantee I can make,” Patrick says, rueful but kind. “Although, I don’t think that was a guarantee anyone could make to you before, either.”

“Mmm,” he hums, looking up towards the hazy sky with a nervous purse of the lips. “It’s just the odds seemed a little better. Before.”

“Perhaps,” Patrick says, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. “I can make you one guarantee, if it helps.”

“I’m listening.”

“David, I’ll do everything I can to make sure this is not my only night with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several years ago I read a book called _The World Without Us_ by Alan Weisman. It’s a researched thought experiment about how the world might change if human activity ceased. It doesn’t come to a lot of clear conclusions, but parts of it inspired a lot of the optimism in this story for how resilient nature can be and how quickly the world might rebound. I’m sure you can find any number of journal articles and books that suggest the opposite. Honestly that doesn’t sound like that much fun to write or read in this context, so I’m going with optimism.
> 
> Converting a gasoline engine to biodiesel might be a little complicated for the Bob we know on the show, but [insert alternate universe/wish fulfillment hand waiving here].
> 
> I made some new world pizza in the name of research and can verify that spelt crust is delicious (although ideally made with yeast).


	6. All your life (Reprise)

When they are finished eating, Patrick stands up and takes their plates. He washes them under the lower spigot hooked up to the rain barrel. He cleans the baking sheet next while David helps dry, trying to be patient despite a building pressure in his pants. Once they are finished cleaning and everything is back in the bin, Patrick closes the gate on the back fence, turns the rain barrel spigot hard to the left to make sure it’s completely closed, and invites David back inside. 

They don’t go right upstairs this time. They pass through an unfurnished back room into a white plaster hallway that spills out on a large open space, glass storefront windows on the opposite wall. The front doors are closed, the glass missing in one of them. Empty display shelving is pushed up against the front wall as a barricade. A few items remain on the shelving that is still in the middle of the room. David notices a tube of fungal cream, three or four gallons of paint, a row of white plastic picture frames with “#1 Dad” inscribed in iridescent blue, and a shelf still stocked with unopened _ Golden Girls _ chia pets. So, clearly not a specific type of store, David thinks. Despite the bleak surroundings, there’s a twinge deep inside him. The place feels like it’s full of memories, which is preposterous since David has never been here before. It’s a sensation that haunts David upstairs, a dimensional rift inside him. Ghosts? Memories? Dreams? He’s not sure what to call the sense of being watched by another version of himself. But it has never felt stronger than right now. 

“I’m just going to grab something from the safe,” Patrick says, handing David the tote of dinner supplies. He goes around a wood counter, half the drawers hanging open, and through a doorway. There’s some clicking and shuffling and sounds of things scraping against each other.

“How did you end up here?” David calls out, walking toward the front and turning back to look at the space. 

“Well as one of the first ones, I got to pick. It was just a feeling I guess. The café is in better shape, but this place felt right. And it’s nice to have the safe to keep valuables.” 

Patrick comes back holding a small black cube that must be heavy, judging by the taut lines of his forearm.

“What’s that?” David asks.

“It’s a battery.”

“Oh,” David says, puzzled. Patrick doesn’t explain, just squeezes his arm with a shy smile and heads upstairs.

It’s nearly dark now, so it takes a little extra awareness to avoid bumping into things, even in the sparse room. 

“You can set that on the table. I’ll put it away later,” Patrick says.

David sets the bin down and starts to empty it. He can do that much at least. It must all go on the shelf—there’s really nowhere else for it—and it’s easy enough to group like items. David rearranges a few other things while he’s at it.

Patrick busies himself by the windows near the bed, sliding them open to let the breeze carry in the cooler night air. David is putting the last of the dinner items away when suddenly the room glows, warm and sparkly. David turns around, still holding the empty bin in his hand. There is a string of tiny LED lights on the back side of the center roof beam where David didn’t see them before. Patrick has plugged the strand into the port on the battery. The little bulbs don’t provide a lot of illumination, but Patrick looks tawny, standing there under them, a self-satisfied smile on his face. David doesn’t know nearly as much as he wants to about Patrick, but this gesture is every part of Patrick he does know: sweet, thoughtful, generous, industrious, and just a little smug at having earned the look of startled surprise on David’s face.

“You have lights,” David says. It sounds inane, but he’s trying to keep his feet on the floor and the blood in his head and the wanting in check. For just a little longer.

“I have a pedal generator. It’s pretty inefficient, but it seems like it was worth the effort now that I’m seeing that look on your face,” Patrick says, quiet. He takes a couple steps and stops, leaning against the dresser dividing the space, hip against the smooth wood, legs crossed, arms crossed, and still looking so fucking open.

“And here I thought you were using the pizza to seduce me,” David tries. God if he can just hang on long enough to have the conversation they need to have before he loses all ability to talk. _ I want. I want. I want. _The chant is coming from somewhere deep inside, syncing with his heartbeat, flowing into the smallest capillaries along his skin, consuming him from within. 

“I’m glad you liked it,” Patrick says. “Wanna set that down and come over here?”

David nods and leaves the bin on the floor next to the table. Patrick backs away as he approaches so he has to chase him to the bed where he finally stops, standing next to it. He wraps David up tight as he tilts into his mouth, teeth scraping David’s bottom lip. 

“You asked me a question, after our first date,” Patrick whispers against his neck. “You asked if I was past it, what happened.”

“I remember,” David says, wrapping his arms across themselves over Patrick’s shoulders.

“And we talked about going slow,” Patrick says, biting into the skin below David’s ear, then soothing it with his tongue.

“We did. You didn’t want to be reckless.”

“Hm,” Patrick says, the hum vibrating against David’s ear. “And we’ve been very slow.”

“We have been.”

Patrick takes David’s ear between his teeth and tugs just a little.

“And if I do want to be reckless tonight?”

His voice rasps like his hands, turning David ragged as they dig into the skin under his sweater.

“I’m yours,” David whispers. “Do whatever you want.”

He has said that before to other people. It’s very nearly a script he always reads. He has never been method about it. He has never meant it quite like this. Never trusted the hands that are about to lay themselves on him quite like this. Patrick’s hands are literally life-giving, David thinks. For all the fun it was imagining him as the villain earlier in the night, Patrick is going to rob David of his soul if he’s not careful. David is not feeling very careful.

Hoping they might get to try something new in Patrick’s bed, David brought the last of the lube he packed when he went into the silo, his favorite one from the high end shop in his neighborhood. He’s been saving the small amount that’s left in hopes he’d find someone worth using it with, making do with other products in the shower for his own needs.

He doesn’t tell Patrick about saving the lube. Patrick doesn’t need the pressure, he tells himself. It has nothing to do with the way Patrick makes him feel like even in this stifling air, he can breathe easier.

“I want to come inside you,” Patrick says, voice low and steady.

“Yes. Good. Whatever you want,” David repeats, because the way Patrick says it, like David’s giving him a gift, knocks the words right out of his head.

“Can I undress you?” Patrick asks. “The battery life is unpredictable and I want to see you before the lights go out.”

“Yes,” David says softly, removing his own shoes in the name of expedience.

Patrick is gentle but efficient, lifting first the sweater and then the T-shirt. He unbuttons his own shirt quickly and drapes it over the dresser with David’s, his own undershirt following. 

As he turns, David swallows. Patrick is muscular and broad-shouldered, but lean. It’s not a gym-worked body. His body has been put to use, like a carefully calibrated instrument for survival. The scar that starts above his wrist dips across the hollow of his elbow and back across his bicep to the ridge of his shoulder. It looks purple in the light. There’s another one below his clavicle, much thinner but sideways L-shaped and dark. 

Patrick's confidence falters as he lets David take it in for a minute, eyes cast away.

"You're fucking gorgeous," David says, because he is, and clearly no one has ever told him that, and he should know the truth.

Patrick blinks, startled, looking back toward David. David sees his left hand twitch, ready to scratch along the scarred right forearm. 

"Come here," David says, reaching for the hand. He comes.

David kisses the skin at the top of the scar, not sure how much Patrick wants to be touched there. Then he slips his hands between Patrick's arms and his ribs and splays them on his back, pulling him in the rest of the way until they fit together. Too close to be on display, Patrick finds his footing again. He sucks and soothes his way down David’s neck, across his shoulder. There’s a sharp bite into the bone at the top of the curve, and it’s like Patrick has found an “on” button David didn’t know he had. 

Things get sloppy and frantic from there, mouths scraping, teeth and stubble turning every accessible inch raw. Patrick slides his hand under David’s soft pants, pushing them down enough so that when he nudges David back on the bed, he can pull them off the rest of the way when he’s ready. He removes his own pants first, so it’s just his boxer-briefs remaining when he bends in front of David to finish undressing him. His hands slide down with his pants, fingers grazing the insides of David’s knees, his calves, his ankles before he’s through. Patrick’s hands are beyond callused; they’re rough and work-worn. When he runs them back up David’s more sensitive skin, the scrape of them feels possessive.

“Lie back,” Patrick whispers once their clothes are all piled on the dresser. David does, and Patrick seems to switch gears again. David doesn’t mind letting Patrick drive, but he wants his fill too, so in the urgent tangling of limbs skin to skin, David rolls so he’s on top. He knows Patrick wants more than this, but he can’t resist digging his hips into him a little so their cocks wrestle between their bodies. 

“Some day, if you want, I’ll do this inside you,” David purrs against Patrick’s cheek with a roll of his hips, smiling as Patrick bucks up into him in response. 

“Fuck, yeah. Yeah I want that.”

“Okay, I’ll draw you an I.O.U.,” David says, pushing back with his arms to take another long drag against Patrick. There’s teeth and a noise against David’s arm, a kind of laughing strangled moan. 

“God I know you’re joking, but I hope you do it anyway,” Patrick says. “I want that so bad, David.” 

Patrick’s just babbling, but something about the words leaving his mouth makes them true. David wants to be inside him like he wants to breathe.

“I’ll draw it up,” David says, trying to stifle his own low groan as those gritty fingertips slide down and feather over the crease of David’s ass. 

“I have something in my bag, though, if you want to do this inside me,” David says with another roll of his hips, hoping he’s not pushing. They’d talked once or twice before about things they might try tonight, and Patrick just said as much.

“Yeah. I do. I really want you in my mouth first, though.” Patrick leaves a mark on David’s shoulder as he rolls them back.

“Okay,” David nods, grinning.

He considers telling Patrick to wait, that he’ll enjoy the feeling of David coming when Patrick is inside him, that it will be better for them both, but Patrick is already sliding his way down his body again, teeth hard on his nipple, and _ fuck, _they’ll do it that way another time.

David knows, now, what Patrick can do with his mouth, with his hands, and he is still not prepared. Patrick sucks gently as he slides his mouth down around David’s shaft, his tongue pressing against the underside as his cheeks cave in. David grips the sheets beneath him at first and then digs his hands into Patrick’s hair. David is nearly there when Patrick pulls off entirely with a salacious pop, and then takes each of his balls in his mouth, one at a time. He exchanges mouth for hand and looks up at David. 

“David, can I—”

“Yes, anywhere. Yes,” David says, not needing to hear the rest. Patrick’s hand continues to work as his tongue skims David’s taint, teasing the line to his hole without quite reaching the rim. 

Patrick gives him just enough air, just enough reprieve between onslaughts so he is pushed closer and closer to an edge that he can’t quite reach. David has had so many people touch him in all the places Patrick is touching him, and yet there’s something about the way Patrick does it. He’s not just exploring, he’s mapping. He’s taking in each slope and rise and line and vein so he can find his way back there whenever he wants. David is leaking so much that Patrick uses it to slicken his hands so they slide more easily over David’s skin. Patrick digs his fingers into his hips, urging David to show him the pace he wants, and finally the edge comes closer as David is allowed to move. 

David can hear every gasp and grunt and moan he is making in this new silent earth. It’s unnerving—he even stifled them at first. But there’s also something exhilarating about it, like the world is holding still for them, like they can shake it back to life with each thrust. Patrick slows them just a fraction and sinks deeper. David comes into his humming throat. 

\-----

It takes them both a bit to recover, but the lights are still on, and Patrick is still hard and needy.

“You still want me inside you?” Patrick asks, his lips ghosting over David’s arm. 

“Yeah. Can you reach my bag?”

Patrick grabs the backpack from where he left it by the nightstand and hands it to him, sitting back on his heels. Patrick feels a little nervous, maybe, but mostly happy. Excited.

“You're fucking gorgeous too, by the way,” he says, enjoying the way David’s movements catch at that, the pleased smile that flickers across his face in the soft light as he unzips the front pouch and pulls out supplies. They’re both so starved for human contact, but he needs David to know it’s more than that. For him, with David, it’s so much more than that. 

Patrick opens the condom and takes the round container. David stops him, a hand on his. 

“You have to stretch me a little first,” David says. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a beautiful cock like yours inside me.”

“O-Okay,” Patrick says, his brain suddenly feeling very empty. He realizes he doesn’t actually know how this is supposed to go.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. I just want to be better at this.”

“I should make a joke about you being a beginner, but I feel like you would stop what you’re about to do just to spite me,” David says.

“And yet you sort of just made it anyway,” Patrick replies, but he’s smiling. Everything about David makes him smile.

“We don’t have to do this if you need more time,” David says, sitting up a little further, squeezing his hand.

“I want to. I just want it to be good for you.”

“Fuck, Patrick. Have you seen yourself? Trust me. It will be good.” 

David kisses him, thrusting his tongue into Patrick’s mouth until he’s whining. Then he lies back and spreads his legs, letting Patrick work him open, giving him gentle guidance and telling him when he’s ready for more. 

“Start slow at first,” David says, squeezing his forearm as he lines himself up. “You’re going to feel so good inside me.”

Patrick eases in so slow that David has to encourage him a little. Once he’s inside though, he drops his head and groans. 

“Fuuuck,” he says. “You’re so tight. Is that— Is— Are you—”

“Shhh, hey. It feels so good. You’re doing so good,” he says. David's hands rake through his hair, and it helps. The scratching against his scalp gives him a point of focus other than the dizzying heat where he's buried in David. David pushes himself down, adjusting their angle a little as he hooks his legs around Patrick's hips. 

"Fuck, I have to move," Patrick gasps.

"Yeah, good," David says, his eyes dark as he presses kisses to Patrick's forehead. "You feel so good."

Patrick pulls back slowly, slides in slowly. David’s hands grip his shoulders tightly, travel up his neck. He moves with Patrick as he presses their mouths together, helping him, holding him.

Every movement they make, every point of contact, lights up a different set of nerves until they are all buzzing. It’s a new sensation for Patrick. _ Reckless, _he’d said, and he was fucking right because he feels like he is breaking in two. Like when he puts himself back together, there will be a line that forever marks before this and after this.

“Shit, David, I can’t—” Patrick says and then he’s shuddering against David, shocked at how hard he comes. 

David kisses him slowly, surely, reassuringly.

“I told you,” he says after a minute, hands on Patrick’s shoulder blades, keeping him close. “You’re so good.”

“For a beginner?” Patrick mutters, still trembling a little, kissing down the line of David’s shoulder.

“No. God, Patrick. No qualifiers needed.”

\-----

He’s not sure if he is allowed to study Patrick’s scars, but he can’t help it. 

They’re lying side by side, David on his back, Patrick on his stomach, trying to catch their breath. David coughs softly, attempting to clear his lungs. His body is getting used to the tinged air, but it’s still difficult to breathe in as quickly as it wants to. Patrick rolls onto his side and reaches over to scratch David’s chest affectionately. 

The scar slashes darkly across Patrick’s outstretched arm. It’s the scar David has known about, the one he saw when they first met, but he sees now that it’s really two scars, not one. The first stops just above his elbow where there’s two inches of unmarred skin before another one starts. The line over Patrick’s shoulder is slightly shiny in the twinkling lights. If he’s going to ask about it, now is the time. He’s unsure where to start, so he picks a different point entirely.

“Did you know you have a scar here?” David asks, tracing a faint line on the outside of Patrick’s left eyebrow.

Patrick snickers, nuzzling into David’s shoulder. David laughs too, because his body needs to laugh just as much as it needs everything else when he’s with Patrick.

“Is it that noticeable?” he asks, eyes fond and grateful.

“You can’t miss it. Looks like you got in a fight.”

“I did. My grandma's coffee table beat me up.”

David takes his arm and places a gentle kiss to the pulse point of his right wrist, just below the start of the thick line. He traces his thumb lightly over the raised skin. Patrick sucks in a breath but adjusts so he can turn his arm out more, inviting David to look closer if he wants. 

“Does this still hurt?” he asks quietly. His fingers ghost over the stretched skin where Patrick scratches sometimes.

“Sometimes. More like a memory of the pain I think. It— It tingles sometimes.” His breath hitches as David reaches the second line above his elbow, and David takes note. 

“Can I ask what happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“It was a storm. Almost two years ago now. I didn’t make it back home before it started, and I didn’t have everything locked down here like I should have before I left. I had a solar panel in the back and it caught the wind and came loose as I was trying to put it inside. I don’t really remember what happened after that but Ted found me underneath it. He said one of the supports sheared off and tore up my arm. The corner of the panel was right here,” he says, tracing the L-shaped scar near his collar bone. “Probably saved my life, actually, having it on me like that, applying pressure. My arm wasn’t that deep. It just looks bad because of the way it happened and how long it took to find me. And thankfully it was Ted who was in charge of making the rounds. He kept me from bleeding out.”

“Fuck, Patrick,” David says. No wonder he hates storms. “Why didn’t you tell me? You must have been terrified under that dome.”

“I was at first. But I also wanted to be wherever you were. And once I stood there with you for a bit, I felt safe. It was kind of a big night for me all around.”

David can only tolerate the briefest eye contact before he has to look away, studying his own pristine skin. _ A big night_. He’s only beginning to grasp what that night might mean for his life.

“So what you’re saying is I have to be nice to Ted,” David says, opting for the easiest of the thoughts spinning around in his head.

“Well at least a little bit.” Patrick smiles, turning to kiss away the bead of sweat at David’s temple. 

“Do I want to know how close your nearest neighbor is?” David asks.

“Probably not.”

“You don’t care that someone might have heard us?”

“Nah,” Patrick says. “The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with filling the world with the sound of people living.” 

\-----

It’s surprisingly cold when David wakes up, and still dark outside. The breeze filters through the windows and curls around him, raising goosebumps in its wake. He moves to Patrick instinctively, seeking heat. Patrick, still half asleep, hauls him in, pressing a kiss to David’s shoulder. 

“I like the way you smell,” Patrick murmurs. “Hydrating cream or something. Wintermint, frankincense, and cloves. I still smell it in my dreams.” 

David smiles, turning his head to rub his cheek against Patrick’s nose. He wonders when Patrick decided to learn the scent of his moisturizer. 

Patrick’s free hand roams, sliding up and down the trail below David’s navel, teasing further, and then falls limp against his abdomen. David tips his hips back into him, testing, but there’s no response. David lets him sleep.

\-----

Once the light outside turns hazy with the morning, Patrick gets up. It’s one of the things he likes now, the way he can move with the cycles of the earth and not worry too much about the actual time. He puts a few things in the tote, still sitting on the floor where David left it, and heads out back. He pulls spinach from the garden and notices the small bowl of four eggs and two links of cured sausage on the edge of the sink by the back door. There’s a note tucked into it on a scrap of cardboard. 

_ For you and your guest_, is all it says. Patrick laughs, recognizing George’s handwriting. Patrick didn’t tell George he was having a guest, so this is obviously George’s way of saying they were noisy last night. George lives in the café, raises hens on the roof, and makes chicken sausage in a smokehouse out back. George has his own demons that haunt his sleep, so he tends to walk the town at night, keeping an eye on things, finding it easier to sleep during the day. Patrick puts the note in the compost pile with a grin, remembering how delightfully vocal David was.

Patrick starts a fire in the brick oven, spreading the wood to try to get a low flame. On the one hand, the way he feels with David explains a lot about the way he didn’t feel with Rachel. On the other hand, the through-line of his life has been snapped on more than one occasion, between breaking up with her, moving hours away to work for Ray, the all-consuming fires, the silo, those terrifying first days upstairs, and the storm. Two storms, actually. The one that nearly cost him his arm, and the one that gained him David Rose.

David is not the first man he has been attracted to, but he’s the first one that made Patrick feel consumed by it. Patrick brought almost nothing with him when he left home. He packed only a small bag, his guitar, and a few sentimental items. He packed a truth in his heart too, a truth about who he is, a truth he intended to live out when he got to his new life. In the events that followed, he had to remake himself so quickly that his truth got buried, packed away in case there ever came an occasion in the new world to pull it out again. And now that it is out, unpacked, examined for the first time by someone else, he feels like he is in the process of being remade again. 

Patrick whips the eggs, cuts up the sausage and tears the spinach leaves and combines them into an approximation of a frittata. He doesn’t usually put this much effort into breakfast. He had added a few ingredients he wouldn’t normally to the pizza too—herbs and honey and the good kind of cheese—hoping to impress. He knows the food tastes good to David’s dulled taste buds no matter what, but he wants the memory to taste good too whenever David looks back on his first night here.

David tracks him down as he’s getting ready to put the cast iron pan over the fire. 

“I get real food for breakfast too?” David asks, wrapping his arms around Patrick from behind, scratching at his belly through the soft fabric of his T-shirt. 

“George across the street dropped off some eggs.”

“How nice of him,” David says. 

“You okay?” Patrick asks. 

“Yeah.” David sinks down, resting his chin on Patrick’s shoulder.

“I can hear you thinking, David,” Patrick says.

“Ugh, fine. I’m sort of afraid to ask, but where’s the toilet?”

Patrick’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, and David has to lift his head.

“Through the gate and around the back of the fence there’s a privy.”

“Yep, worst fears confirmed.”

“Would you rather a pit in the woods?”

“No,” David growls and stomps off. 

Patrick watches him go with a smile and turns back to the eggs. 

\-----

David has been walking up and down the ramp most of the afternoon. It’s Thursday, the day Patrick is supposed to return. Patrick has gone away a couple times since they started dating, but never this long and never this far. He’d finally told David what he is looking for on these trips; David hopes he finds it soon. He hates thinking of Patrick alone on the road, making inquiries, trying to get intel about his parents in a world where the currency is one of opportunity. 

It doesn’t help that there’s no training to keep him busy. At this point in the process, Patrick mostly meets with each of them one-on-one depending on their goals for reentry. Everyone has spent at least one night upstairs. Jake has already moved into an old machine shop between the silo and the center of town. Twyla is working with Patrick to find a place upstairs and get it set up. Ray has a reentry package for each silo resident that includes the basics for water collection, filtration, cooking, privy and garden construction, and other necessities. Patrick spent most of last week teaching Twyla how to establish and maintain it all. Alexis had her first night upstairs with Ted last weekend. David is far from official reentry, but he has spent several nights with Patrick since his first night upstairs two weeks ago.

Instead of restlessly walking the ramp, David should be dropping by Stevie’s office and talking about his own reentry plans. Given the way things are going with Patrick, he’s not sure where to start. Normally, it would be way too soon to move in with someone—he has never even lived with someone he’s dating—but it seems silly to go to the trouble of setting up his own place when he hopes to spend half his nights at Patrick’s. Should he bring it up with Patrick? Is Patrick expecting him to get his own place like everyone else, set it up, live on his own for awhile? It’s so fucking confusing and these days apart have only made it worse.

David attempted to spend the first night Patrick was away by staying alone at his place. He didn’t tell anyone, which was not smart in hindsight. He slept no more than five minutes. He tried again the second night, but he couldn’t get the fire to heat the food properly and ended up burning the hash he was working on. He did sleep a little, but by the morning he was so overtired and hungry he stumbled in the last quarter-mile to the silo and ripped his sweater on the tree he grasped to catch his fall. He spent the rest of the walk sobbing. The hole in one of his favorite sweaters was disappointing, but he has spent enough time alone with his thoughts in the past few years to know that is just the surface of what’s bothering him.

David can’t seem to shake the feeling that there’s a version of him following him around, tsking at this pathetic half-life he is trying to build. Despite all the trials and loss, there’s a huge piece of him that stubbornly refuses to adjust to this world. It’s a piece that hates how insular the world is now that culture doesn't cross communities through art or fashion or music, that recognizes that at some point, everything about this bunker will be revealed for what it is: a stopgap measure for those whose wealth and privilege allowed them to delay their acceptance of a new reality. It’s a sham, and David is part of it, because he’d prefer to delay a final move upstairs as long as possible. 

Patrick is the only part of his life that feels like it wasn’t pulled from an apocalyptic movie. Patrick is beautiful. He’s scarred and somehow also pristine. Perfect. He’s only calling David boyfriend and trying to build something with him because he doesn’t know what an imposter David is. David gamely builds fire and uses the privy and deals with the lack of electricity and real plumbing upstairs because he knows he can go use the bathroom on Tier 7 whenever he wants. 

He’s on his way back down, literally and figuratively spiraling on the ramp, when Patrick finds him.

“Hey, I’ve been looking all over for you,” Patrick says.

“You’re back.” David’s words are muffled into Patrick’s navy fleece pull-over as he’s wrapped into a tight hug.

“I’m back.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” David asks, not sure what he hopes the answer is.

“Um, no. Well I found an answer but not a very good one. My hometown is gone. Burned. Everyone either left or they’re— Hmm.” Patrick makes a throaty sound like he can’t seem to cut off the rest of the sentence, much as he may want to. “They’re gone.”

Patrick swallows and blinks hard. He won’t make eye contact.

“Hey, you wanna talk about it?” David asks, not sure if he should pull him in again or give him space. 

“Nah, maybe later. I was thinking we could just eat here. It might be nice not to have to cook and clean up.” 

That worries David. If Patrick is voluntarily spending more time in the bunker, even on Tier 1, he must be drained by more than his journey.

Patrick picks at his food for awhile before forcing it down, worrying David further. 

Patrick manages to stomach still more time in the silo to accompany David down to Tier 7 to gather his things.

“Um, what’s this?” Patrick asks, taking in a stack of value-pack condom boxes sitting next to David’s bag on the table.

“Fuck. Um, Alexis and I were dividing them up and I forgot to put them away.”

“You stockpiled condoms?” Patrick asks, his eyes wide.

“Yeah, although I really thought I’d be further into my stash by now which would make this look a little more, um, reasonable?”

“And, ah, lubricant?” Patrick asks. 

“I’m out of that, unfortunately.”

“We used the last of it?” Patrick asks. Patrick has that look on his face, like maybe he thinks David is sweet for using up his lube with him, the exact look David has been trying to avoid.

“Don’t look at me like that, okay? Someone had to use it eventually. Might as well be you.” David thinks he does a pretty good job sounding casual about it. Patrick nods with a little smile that says he’s going to let him get away with it, even though they both know the truth.

“I’m touched. Curious though. Why did you stockpile condoms but not lube?” Patrick asks.

“Um, lube can be used in solo work, while condoms typically require a partner. Hence one being used up before the other.” David lets a small smile creep into his mouth at the admission. The conversation seems to have distracted Patrick from his melancholy at least. 

“What’s the expiration date on those, anyway?” Patrick asks.

“Well, I picked the farthest out date I could find when we started packing. We have . . .” He pauses to check the small stamped numbers on the box. “Ten months to use them all.”

Patrick picks up a box and appears to do some mental math, counting under his breath.

“Well, we should probably get working on this.” 

David’s face beams into a wide smile.

“I believe I did give you an I.O.U.”

“Mm, you did, you did,” Patrick agrees. “It was a surprisingly evocative sketch, too, considering it was drawn with stick figures.”

“I’ll hit up the library when I get back tomorrow and do some research,” David decides. “I refuse to believe this lube situation is an unsolvable problem.” 

Patrick smiles at him, like he’s really seeing him for the first time since he got back. It’s a soft smile, one David’s not sure he’s seen before.

“What?” David asks. 

“Nothing,” Patrick says, shaking it off.

“Tell that to your face.”

“I think I missed you.”

“Mmm,” David says. He’s warm all over. It’s different from the all-consuming heat he felt when they first got together. This is a new kind of warmth, one that burns slower, longer. One that might stick around. “Let’s go.”

\-----

Patrick uses a pair of long tongs to take the sweet potato off of the baking pan in the improvised wood fire oven and transfer it to the cutting board. David watches with interest as he slices it open and peels the skin back with the edge of the tongs. 

David reaches with a finger to touch it but Patrick bats his hand away.

“It’s still too hot,” he cautions.

David examines the sweet potato dubiously. It’s the fourth attempt in their efforts to find a solution to the lube supply problem. There were resources in the silo library that were helpful in terms of ideas, but nothing with a recipe or process that was clear enough to follow. So for the past couple of weeks they’ve been experimenting, which has been . . . fun. Very fun, if a little uneven in the results department.

They'd tried sunflower oil first, David fingering Patrick open. If the look on Patrick’s face as David had curled his lubricated fingers against his prostate was any indication, it had been a success to say the least. The problem is that the sunflower oil comes from seeds from the community sunflower crop, which are in limited supply, pressed using a manual press, and rationed to each person in small amounts. There’s not enough to go around for them to use much of it for fucking. 

The second experiment was seaweed, which they had harvested with Stevie’s gleeful permission from the hydroponic tanks in the silo. David had tried seaweed-based natural lube in his past life when he dated an acupuncturist who was even more prickly about the contents of the products used on their body than David. But that seaweed lube had come in an inky green glass jar, not straight out of a tank and into a pan. There wasn’t much guidance in the resources he had found on what to do with the seaweed other than to boil it down, which they’d done. It had been too difficult to control the heat with the fire once it started boiling, and the resulting substance had separated into two parts. The thinner, oilier part had seemed the most promising. 

“I don’t think this one is going inside me,” David had said, scowling as he'd dipped a hand into the small bowl of the drained off liquid and spread it over his palm. 

“Can’t think of anything else to do with it?” Patrick had asked, tilting his hips so their naked bodies aligned. Really David had had no choice but take them both in his coated hand until Patrick’s snarky mouth was reduced to incoherent noises. It had been fairly effective, David admitted to himself (although never to Patrick), but he’d vetoed any future attempts. There was a limited supply in the tanks, and David was not crazy about enlisting Stevie’s help to acquire it, not least because Stevie’s help always comes with a catch. It had also been too much effort to boil it, holding it over the fire to adjust the heat exposure. The clincher had been the way the smell lingered uncomfortably on his hand even after washing, giving him unsettling dreams about a mutant octopus. 

There had technically been a third experiment inspired by David’s research, involving animal fat, a substance that was readily available and easy to obtain. Its chief advantages were that Patrick usually had some on hand for cooking, stored in a small lidded container, and that it could be used without too much preparation or advance notice. But the first time Patrick had dipped a finger in the container and rubbed a little between his fingers, feeling the heavy insoluble grease of it, they’d both vetoed it without trying. That experiment had been called off for now.

Looking at the sweet potato as Patrick peels away the skin with a fork and the tongs, David considers vetoing this outright too. It does look like it tastes good. They could add some honey and eat it for dessert to avoid wasting it. 

Spreading the softened potato out on the cutting board, Patrick scoops up a little with a finger to test its temperature.

“Mmm,” he says. “It smells better than the other things we’ve tried.” 

Patrick sucks hard on his finger to clean all the oils. David doesn’t think he’s doing it on purpose, but it’s a solid argument nonetheless. 

“It’s so thick,” David says, testing the flavor for himself. It’s definitely the best tasting and smelling of the options they’ve tried so far. 

“Actually I have a sieve,” Patrick says, disappearing into the building before David can tell him it’s not necessary. David takes a bit of the mashed flesh and tries to picture how they might use it, feeling frustrated. He could see, maybe, enjoying it if there was a nice hot shower to follow. It’s just so pulpy and all that’s available here is a quick clean in air-temperature water in the improvised outdoor shower. He knows it’s not productive to get pouty about the things from the old world that don’t exist anymore, but it’s hard not to when none of their experiments have yielded an obvious solution.

Patrick comes back down with a mesh sieve with a long handle in one hand and a ceramic bowl in the other. He scoops the orange paste into the sieve and presses it with the back of a spoon into the bowl.

“What do you miss most about— about before?” David asks.

“Baseball,” Patrick says, without hesitation. “Not the sport so much, just the joy of spending an afternoon with your friends, together, nothing else to do, nowhere else to be.”

“Hm,” David says, considering. He’s not sure what he misses most. It used to be the food, but that’s changed now that he is upstairs. 

“What about you?”

“Probably music?” he thinks, then realizes it’s true. “I feel like there’s always a song I don't like stuck in my head. It would be nice to have some control over it.”

“That’s pretty common, actually. It’s the silence. My brain likes to play 'Wake Up' by Arcade Fire whenever I’m walking a long way. I think it’s something about the big whoa-oh part. I used to love that song, and now I can't escape it.”

“I’m currently hosting the Spice Girls and I've never liked their music.”

“Maybe there's something new spicing up your life?” Patrick asks with a suggestive eyebrow raise.

“You don't _always_ have to make the obvious joke."

"I was actually fishing for a compliment," Patrick says.

"Ah. So how’s this looking?” David asks, blatantly changing the subject. He tries to tuck his smile into the side of his mouth but it doesn't really work. It tightens its way across his cheeks.

“We might have to cook it a little longer next time,” Patrick says, trying to work all the moisture down through the mesh. 

“Next time?” David asks, scrunching his face. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” 

Patrick gives him a good-natured smile and continues to work the potato with the spoon. His forearms flex with the task, his hands strong and agile, reminding David that there is a lot of incentive to solving this dilemma.

Really the sweet potatoes are their last option that feels like it might be remotely manageable, and they smell good, actually, and taste great, and anyway his main goal here is to fuck Patrick in every way Patrick wants it. Patrick has been pretty clear that he wants it all, which means they need one of these experiments to work.

When Patrick sets the sieve back on the cutting board, still holding a thick pulp, David is surprised to see a much thinner and smoother substance in the bowl. He dips his finger in and rubs it between his fingers in what has become his standard method of assessment. It’s smooth and oily but not so greasy as to need an industrial strength cleanser to wash out. 

“How do you want to try it?” David asks. His brain, which sometimes lags when forced to confront whatever required adjustment this altered world has dished up, is imagining ways it might be nice, ways he might have used something like melted chocolate in the old world. Patrick reaches over and takes David’s hand, licking the makeshift lube off his fingers as he sucks them one at a time into his mouth.

“I want to eat it out of you,” he says softly, intensely. 

Patrick has toyed with his hole, used his fingers a few times, but never rimmed him, eaten him. Just the thought of it makes David hard. 

“Okay. Yeah, um, we can try that.” David feigns ease, because they still have to clean up the food residue or they’ll attract vermin. Or Roland. Or both.

\-----

When they finally get upstairs, Patrick helps David out of his clothes and asks him to lie back on the bed. He finds his mouth, licking into him, biting, probing, doing everything he can to kiss David thoroughly out of his head. David notices vaguely that Patrick is still dressed as the tech fabric of his shirt tugs against the hairs on David's chest. 

“I want you to put it on yourself while I take my clothes off,” he whispers huskily against David’s throat, handing him the bowl they've just prepared. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” David breathes into his ear.

“Put it everywhere you want my mouth,” Patrick replies before backing away.

David stares at him, a little taken aback at first, and then smiles as Patrick stands at the foot of the bed and removes his shoes, begins unbuttoning his shirt, fully aware by now of the effect it has on David when he bares his worked-in body. David forgets he has a job to do, lost in the show.

“David, please. I want you so bad. I want you ready for me,” Patrick reminds him.

“Grab a towel,” David says, nodding to the stack which has migrated from the shelf to the top of the dresser now that David spends a couple nights a week. 

Patrick comes back to position the towel and pillows under David as he lifts his hips. David opens his legs and lets Patrick watch him prepare, slicked fingers tracing and spreading.

It’s warm, still, and it feels . . . good, actually. Nice. Smooth and just sticky enough to stay where he puts it.

As Patrick climbs in, bracketing David with his arms, David’s hand trails the residue of the lube along the curve of Patrick’s shoulder. He follows it with his teeth, biting and sucking it off above his scar. The skin is tender there, and Patrick groans, low and needy as David’s teeth scrape against the muscle at the top of his shoulder, knowing how far he can go before it’s too much, too close to the dark, sensitive line. 

Patrick noses along the dip in the center of David’s chest, using his fingers to pinch David’s nipples so they’re hard before teasing them with his mouth. All of their experiments have been sensory, and not always in a good way. This one is more. Sensual. The sweet smell mixing with David’s heat.

“I think you like it,” Patrick murmurs into the skin below his navel, his teeth grazing with each sharp consonant. 

“I like what you’re about to do with it,” David clarifies, and Patrick takes the hint. He kneads his hips, scraping his thumb along the soft inside of the joint where he knows David loves to be touched, surprised to find it’s wet with their concoction. He lifts up enough so David can watch him lick it off his thumb, and then follows the trail with his mouth down between his legs. 

He can tell the minute David gives in to it, lets himself get lost in Patrick: the weight of him, the feel of him as he undoes his hesitations with his hands, his mouth. He becomes pliant and restless in equal measure, no longer able to hold still, willing to move at the lightest touch. Patrick presses sharp kisses to the inside of one thigh as he slides a hand up the other, pushing them open. He works his way down, hands gripping David’s cheeks, thumbs massaging slow circles near his hole. He kisses David’s taint, sucking lightly on the lube distributed there. He works the flat of his tongue against the rim, gentle and stiff in turn. He works around, across, into the crease, along the edge. When Patrick finally puts pressure behind it, pushing his tongue into David, he feels his hips jitter in his hands. He fucks him with his tongue, driving deeper and sliding slowly out, collecting more of the buttery taste along the rim, around his mouth, before he thrusts back in.

He loves all the ways they can fuck, hopes they can fuck this way again. Patrick has never done this to someone before, has no idea what this would have been like in the old world with countless products available. He doesn’t need to know. The taste of David surrounds him, engulfs him. He doesn’t need anything else. 

\-----

If he can’t sleep, Patrick thinks a few hours later, at least he gets to enjoy the view of David’s bare ass. David is sleeping on his stomach, his hair wild from thrashing against the pillow while Patrick held him in his hands, David’s heels at Patrick’s back, Patrick licking deep inside him. David is rangier than he looks in his clothes, with a body that tapers nicely from broad shoulders to narrow hips. His skin is so soft it almost feels soothing to run his hands across it. He is soft inside, too, and so beautiful. Patrick’s heart aches to be closer to him, an ache he is starting to think might be love.

Patrick doesn’t even know, if given the opportunity to try several people on for size, who he might have found attractive before everything changed. Maybe he would have fallen for someone like Colin, who tried out for _Oklahoma_ because it looked good for college admissions and who was assigned with Patrick to do extra choreography lessons. Maybe someone like Greg, who helped him found the business student networking group in college, whose work on the rowing team resulted in an incredible pair of shoulders that Patrick now realizes he admired perhaps more than normal for a platonic friend. Maybe Charlie, he thinks, who worked the front desk at his first big corporate job and who was the first person who introduced him to they/them pronouns. Maybe even Rachel, after some time to grow up and apart and make their own way in the world for a while. That’s a stretch, he thinks, based on how much he enjoys the weight of David’s cock on his tongue. 

He doesn't need David as much as he needs water and oxygen and food, but he wants him more than all of those things combined. Patrick is sure about one thing. Now, if the person in question is not David Rose, he knows they won’t fit. 

He can still feel the soft air David blew across his rim as he wet him, prepared him. The way his fingers curled and scissored inside him, more boldly now with proper lubrication. Patrick’s hole feels pleasantly stretched by David’s cock and his body pleasantly empty. His mind, on the other hand, has filled right back up since David drifted off to sleep. 

Patrick hasn’t been able to sleep well since he learned the first piece of real intel about his hometown. In places like the one he lives in now, towns that managed to avoid a direct hit from the flames, people are learning how to rebuild and reinvent their communities. And he has met people who managed to escape the fires and build new homes elsewhere. It’s still possible his parents made it out alive, found a refuge somewhere else. But it is much less likely than it seemed a few weeks ago. Most of his extended family lived within a few blocks of each other—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. Even if some of them made it out, it’s unlikely that they all did. So he’s grieving someone; he just doesn’t know who. Which is almost worse. He can’t bear to grieve them all, to accept that every last one is gone. The vision that once comforted him—his parents living on a ridge somewhere with a cat and a big garden—now seems like a child’s fantasy.

His eyes are finally getting heavy from sheer exhaustion when he hears a noise downstairs. It’s Roland, Patrick’s body tells him, willing him toward unconsciousness. Roland has been known to come in through the missing pane on the front door downstairs and sleep under one of the display racks Patrick has used to barricade the entrance. 

Something falls off one of the shelves and shatters. 

\-----

David startles awake and ratchets up to a sitting position. He starts to roll over to go back to sleep when he notices Patrick sitting next to him, body tense and ready to spring.

Both wide awake now, they hear a sneeze and then more rustling downstairs.

Patrick grips his arm hard, putting a finger to his lips, imploring him to stay quiet. When he is sure David understands, he takes his hand back and slides catlike out of bed. 

Watching Patrick calmly and competently go through a series of practiced motions should ease David’s fears. It has the opposite effect. Patrick withdraws a sheathed hunting knife from under the mattress that David didn’t realize was there. He takes lunging steps towards the window where he hangs a red triangle from the lock on the top of the lower sash. David realizes Patrick knows which points on the floor creak, that he’s avoiding them. The triangle is the final confirmation David needs that this is serious. David asked about the triangle once, since Patrick keeps it on the lower shelf of the nightstand. He still remembers his calm, clinical voice as he had explained: 

“It’s a signal to anyone passing by that the person who lives here is in danger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're feeling anxious, note the first tag.
> 
> Huge thanks to [olive2read](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olive2read/profile) who beta’d the lube experiments for the sake of accuracy and science. I was expecting to be laughed out of the bar when I told the Rosebudd patrons what I was working on and instead they helped me brainstorm, shared helpful links, and validated this whole crazy idea. All of the DIY lube options David and Patrick try are based on various methods used throughout history. The Rosebudd also helped with my panicked search for eleventh hour stuck-in-the-head song suggestions. [DelphinaBoswell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelphinaBoswell/profile) and [RhetoricalQuestions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhetoricalQuestions/profile) provided visual aids of Noah/Patrick for the eyebrow scar. Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is you're all simply the best.
> 
> We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled pretentious book and film references in the Chapter 7 end notes.


	7. You were only waiting for this moment to be free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: There is a description of a minor medical procedure in this chapter. It is _very_ mild. If you are extremely squeamish, you may want to skip the part at Ted’s (but read the last ten lines or so or you’ll miss Plot Points). If you made it through descriptions of Patrick’s scar and how he got it, you’ll probably be fine.

“Stay here,” Patrick whispers to David. He sets the knife on the bed long enough to pull on the first pair of pants he finds. They are David’s; he has to pull them up so they don’t drag.

“What about the gun?” David mouths, pointing above the door. Patrick shakes his head.

“No. I don’t want to kill someone by accident,” he whispers. 

Patrick steps carefully toward the door at the top of the stairs, lifting the knob to prevent it from scraping the floor as he closes it almost all the way. He crouches against the frame so he’s not visible from the bottom and lays his knife across his knees, hand on the hilt. 

David feels like it must be hours, holding their breaths, listening for a creak on the stairs indicating that whoever is down there is coming up. In a world where he questions his purpose daily, David has never felt so useless and ill-equipped. If someone comes up the stairs and manages to overpower Patrick, David has only his fumbling bare hands to try to stop them. Patrick has survived fire and famine and storms and he’s going to die, here, tonight, because David doesn’t know how the fuck to stop it.

He sits, knees to his chest, head in his hands, afraid to look but unable to look away. 

They wait. 

Suddenly there’s a sharp yip from downstairs, followed by a low growl. David knows that growl; it’s Roland. Patrick looks to David quickly again, finger to his lips.

“I’m armed. Leave my dog and go,” Patrick calls down the stairs, cracking the door open.

There’s another crash and then a whine, followed by a high-pitched bark that is most definitely not Roland. 

“What the fuck?” Patrick mutters, standing up. “Roland, come.”

There’s a lumbering up the stairs followed by a slightly softer ascent and two furry blurs tumble into the room, the door banging open against the wall. They’re wrestling playfully, mouthing each other. 

“Roland!” Patrick hollers, and the two dogs freeze belly up, Roland’s head between the other dog’s legs. 

“Whose dog is that?” David asks, shaken. 

The dog stands up, nervous, as they both look at her. She’s a big black terrier with a thick wavy coat that hangs over her eyes. She tilts her head dopily, as if she’s wondering what all the fuss is about.

“No idea,” Patrick says, storming over to the window and ripping down the red triangle. “Want me to kick them out?” he asks. 

“They’re fine,” David says. He will actually feel safer with them here.

Patrick takes the jug of filtered water he keeps upstairs at night and pours a little into a bowl for the dogs, who are panting after their exertion in the shop below. 

“You’re lucky I didn’t have the gun,” Patrick grumbles at Roland as he sets the bowl unceremoniously in front of them without any of his normal fondness. For his part, Roland has the decency to look chastised, hanging his head. 

Patrick sheds David’s pants, puts on his own boxer briefs, and crawls back into bed. 

It only takes a minute for him to realize David is still sitting rigid next to him. 

“Hey, David, you okay?”

“I thought you—” David chokes down a sob. He feels stupid, looking at the dogs curled up together on the rug. “You could have been hurt.”

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“Me? Who gives a fuck what happens to me? You shouldn’t be putting yourself in danger like that.”

“In danger? David, I wasn’t—”

“Patrick, you put the fucking triangle on the window. So either you lied about what it means or you’re lying now.”

Patrick stops. He looks at David again, really looks at him this time. David hasn’t moved from his position since Patrick left the bed, chin on his knees, back against the iron headboard. 

“Hey, I’m sorry. I was scared too for a minute there.”

“Don’t placate me,” David snaps. He’s terrified still and feels stupid to be terrified. If Patrick keeps trying to talk him out of his feelings, he’s going to take it out on him. Whether he deserves it or not.

“What should I do then, David? Tell you that this is the world now, get used to it?”

“Yes! If that’s the truth, then yes. I’m not a child. I think I’ve proven I can handle the realities of the situation.”

“If you don’t trust me to protect you, you might as well stay in the bunker,” Patrick says, bunching his pillow under his head and turning on his side, facing away from David. He’s shaking too, now that the adrenaline is fading. David can feel the mattress trembling.

“I don’t want you to have to protect me. I don’t want to be something you have to take care of all the time.”

Patrick sighs and rolls onto his back, scrubbing his face with his hands. He’s still shaking hard. The shaking makes David feel a little better, seeing that Patrick was just as worked up. Even if he’s being an asshole about it now.

“David, I like protecting you.”

“Well, I don’t like it. I feel like an attachment. A— a barnacle.” Patrick’s eyes are still closed but his mouth quirks up at the corners.

“Jesus, David, do you have any idea how attached I am to _ you_? What is even the point of life if you don’t have someone in it you want to protect?”

David thinks about the way he felt when Patrick crouched by the door. The way he worried for Patrick’s safety without really even thinking about his own.

David reaches for Patrick’s arm, presses his thumb into the wrist just below his scar. 

“You’re not bulletproof, okay? It scared me. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry I got angry,” Patrick says, squeezing his hand.

“Me too,” David says, although he’s not really sure how he feels. 

They settle down to sleep. Patrick stops shaking after a while and starts snoring lightly. David’s head starts to ache, a cramp at the back of his neck that quickly becomes a band of tension squeezing around his skull. David doesn’t close his eyes for the rest of the night except to blink.

\-----

The next morning, Patrick intends to give David a ride back to the silo before scouting out housing for the second batch of reentry recruits. Seeing that David is still on edge, he reformulates.

“Want to walk?” Patrick asks once they’ve lured the dog to Miguel’s to be examined. 

“Back to the silo?”

“Actually, would you be interested in scouting out some houses with me today?” Patrick asks.

“Oh. Okay,” David says, looking startled. “I mean, if that’s what you want.”

“It’s more of a need at this point. It’s been on my to-do list for a while.”

“Oh. Okay,” he says again. 

David’s smile turns soft, and Patrick wants to feel it against his. So he does. David holds him there, day-old stubble rough against his mouth, hands smooth against his cheeks. Patrick wishes he’d done this last night when they’d calmed down—something tangible to remind them both what’s happening here, between them. 

They start by checking on the houses that have been confirmed sound already. Patrick makes mental notes about what each has to offer, whether they might be better suited for an individual, a couple, or a family.

David grows more talkative as they explore. Most of David’s opinions are phrased ironically: _ The green toile wallpaper is a brave choice. The mauve carpet must have been quite the conversation piece. The stylized twig door pulls on the cabinets really bring together the serial killer cabin vibe. _

“This one’s big,” David says as they make their way back downstairs in a large yellow house a block down from the old auto repair shop. 

“Yeah. The McAllisters will need the space, though,” Patrick says.

“The McAllisters?” David asks, confused. Then something dawns on him. “Oh. Yeah. The McAllisters. This would be great for them.”

“What?” Patrick asks. David’s swallowing and nodding and looking around and nodding, and clearly Patrick has fucked up, again, without meaning to.

“I just misunderstood. It’s fine.”

“It’s not, though,” Patrick says, frustrated. Things still feel fragile today, even though they’re having a nice time, and he just wants to get back to where they were before that dog showed up. 

“It’s just when you asked if I wanted to scout out houses, I thought you meant, like, for me. Or for— Nevermind. Like I said, I just misunderstood.”

“I guess I didn’t realize you wanted to move upstairs. Into your own house, I mean.”

“I’m doing the training, aren’t I?” David asks, elbows bent, hands in the air, a touch of exasperation in the question. 

“Yeah. No, yeah of course. I just figured we’d do what we’re doing until you were ready to. Um. I don’t know I thought maybe you’d just move in with me. I mean whenever you wanted to. Eventually.”

David smiles shyly and puts his hands on Patrick’s shoulders, thumbs circling the ridge where his clavicles meet his sternum, following them with his eyes. 

“That could work, too. Down the line. At some point.” David seems shy, and maybe a little uncertain, so Patrick gives him an out, just in case. 

“Well if you’ve seen a place today you like better, I’ll give you first dibs.”

“I’ve never lived with anyone other than my family,” David says carefully.

“Hey, you don’t have to decide now. We can do this as slow or fast as you want. And if you want to live on your own first, that’s fine too. Really.”

David nods, quick and firm, pressing his smile into a line in a way that Patrick has realized is really a better, more honest indication of his feelings than a full open grin.

“There are advantages to your place,” David says. “You, mostly. It’s just a little light on closet space.”

“Mm, I thought of that.”

“You thought of that?” he asks, face scrunched up in disbelief.

“Yes. You haven’t repeated a shirt once since I met you, so I assume you must have, uh, a lot of clothes.”

“I’m sure I’ve worn something again. You probably just didn’t notice.”

“David,” he starts, scratching fondly at David’s back under today’s sweater, black with white horizontal stripes near the collar. “The first thing I noticed about you was that black sweatshirt with the bird on the back and the wings on your shoulders. I’ve noticed every single thing you’ve worn since. I would have noticed if you’d worn something again.” 

“That was. Um. Valentino. The sweatshirt.” David smiles at him, eyes downcast. 

“Okay,” Patrick says, ducking his head so he’s in David’s field of view. “I liked it.”

“Mmkay,” David says with another twisted smile. 

“And you and Valentino and whoever else are welcome to move to my place whenever. Now. Or eventually. Down the line.”

“We’ll think about it,” he says, then kisses Patrick until he stops thinking.

\-----

On the way back to the center of town, Patrick suggests a shortcut across the creek, which is really just a muddy trickle separating the businesses from the houses and schools to the north. The bank of the creek is wooded on both sides and fairly steep.

A bird lands a few feet away from them and begins chirping soft _ tseet tseet tseet _ sounds as it hops around on the branch of a maple sapling. It’s pretty, with a deep black head and a yellow belly, both contrasting sharply with the foliage around it. Somewhere else, another bird calls out a long _ dee dee dee_, and it flies off.

“A chickadee,” Patrick says, surprised.

“Are those unusual now?”

“All birds are unusual now.”

“Oh.”

“Okay if we stop and eat here?” Patrick asks. “If we hear them again, Ray will want to know.”

“Sure,” David says, looking around for anywhere they might stop and eat other than the ground.

Patrick sits on the log footbridge built over the creek, his feet dangling off the edge. David wonders, sitting down next to him, if it was there before, or if the first group to leave the silos built this too. The bird—or one like it—does come back after a bit, perching on the edge of the bridge and eyeing their container of berries. 

“There must be more than two,” David says, hearing more calls back and forth along the creek. “Is that good?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick says, shaking his head, watching the little bird _ tseet tseeting _at them. “It’s different, anyway.”

“It is,” David agrees. Even the softest noises from the bird seem to echo down the creek. It’s jarring after weeks of near-silence, and the pounding ache in his head resumes.

After they pack the lunch containers back into Patrick’s bag and make their way to the silo, Patrick walks him down to Tier 7.

“You doing okay after everything last night?” Patrick asks quietly once they see Alexis isn’t home. 

David knows he has been off all day, first from the intruder, next from the discussion of living arrangements. He is muddy from the creek and his legs are worn out from all the walking.

“I’m just tired,” David says. It’s not a lie. He’s exhausted. Too exhausted to get deeper into the truth of it.

“Okay. I’ll let you get some sleep then.”

“When will I see you again?”

“I’m at the orchard tomorrow. Probably for the day. But Thursday looks good.”

“Okay. Thursday,” David says.

David glances at the clock and wagers his family is probably at dinner. He pulls Patrick close, brushing their lips together once. Then again.

“Hey, I’m sorry I was off today,” David says, trying to keep his gaze steady in Patrick’s so he knows he means it.

“You’re allowed to be off for a day. Any day,” Patrick says calmly, scratching at the hairs on the back of his neck in his way that makes David lean into his hands. “What with the global catastrophe and all.”

“Okay,” David says, smiling a little.

“Goodnight, David.”

“Goodnight, Patrick.”

\-----

Patrick ends up spending more time than he intended helping Herb at the orchard. Herb was also in the first group to come upstairs, helping to establish the orchard and berry fields nearby. He’s nearly sixty and has sciatica, so Patrick, Ted, Robin, Heather, and a few of the others from the first group trade off helping him. 

Tuesday is a long day, hot and muggy, and Patrick is exhausted by the end of it. Since he and David don’t have plans until Thursday, he accepts Herb’s offer to stay Tuesday night on the couch in the living room of the old farmhouse. It rains that night, a startling gentle pitter-patter in contrast to the normal torrent. The rain still makes the ground soft and muddy, undoing some of their work. Patrick slips in the mud on his way down the hill between the orchards and the berry fields and scrapes the back of his left arm and shoulder.

Which is how David finds him later that afternoon, showered and dressed only in running shorts, asleep on his stomach in his bed with an angry swath of red skin across his shoulder blade. Patrick finally wakes up enough to realize he’s being spoken to.

“Fuck, are you okay?” he hears David ask.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Patrick puts his hand to the mattress to lift up and winces, the skin on his back raw.

“What happened? Where were you?” David’s eyebrows are pushed together above his nose. He touches gingerly below the sore skin and helps Patrick sit up.

“I’m sorry, I got stuck at the orchard yesterday. Then I had to fix things after the rain and—”

“You told me you were going to be there for a couple hours yesterday, and home by dinner,” David interjects. “I walked into town this morning with Alexis. I thought I would stop in and say hi—but you weren’t here. . . I got worried. I’ve been looking for you all day.”

“You have?” Patrick asks, unable to hide a slight smile.

“Don’t look at me like that. I saw your clothes hanging up on the line to dry when I got back here and I was all ready to yell at you for scaring the shit out of me until I saw your shoulder.”

“Oh,” Patrick says, and he really does try to keep the smile to a thin line this time. But it’s hard, with David looking at him this way, like he’s important and also a little infuriating. 

“I’m assuming there’s some yarrow in your garden?” David asks, standing up off the bed and brushing imaginary lint off his pants, all business. 

“You know what to do with yarrow?” Patrick asks. 

“Yes, I do. I’m much less distracted when Ted is leading training. So tell me where to find some and I’ll make the paste and spread it on your open wound.”

“It’s hardly an open wound, but there’s some in the planter in front of the building next door.”

“Okay,” David says. When he gets to the door at the top of the stairs, he turns back. “Don’t fucking go anywhere.”

“I won’t,” Patrick laughs after him. 

David makes quick work of it, using the mortar and pestle from the shelf to work the leaves and blooms into a paste. He spreads it carefully over the scraped skin and wipes off the residue from his finger on a washcloth. 

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Patrick says. “It’s really good to see you, though.”

“Mmhmm,” David says, leaving the rest of the mixture on the table for later and covering it with the cloth. “How’s it feeling?”

“Good, actually. Thanks.”

“Sure,” David says. “Why don’t you rest a little more and I’ll make dinner.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, trying not to look surprised. He has seen David spring into action like this for his family downstairs, but it feels different, here, being taken care of by this man who sometimes seems hesitant to engage the upstairs world. 

David gets some venison from George and bakes it with peppers and sweet corn. It tastes good, all of it. When they’re done, David cleans up the dishes outside, locks up valuables in the safe in the office, and does the nighttime check. Patrick has always known David was capable of all of this—first aid and dinner and generally taking care of things—but he’s never seen him take over and just do it. It feels so good to have him here, making decisions, acting like it’s his place, too.

“You know I was thinking today it’s been too long since you’ve been inside me,” Patrick says softly from his spot at the table when David comes back from outside. 

“You think you have that in you tonight?” David asks, sitting in his lap, an eyebrow arched playfully. Although at the same time as his face is making judgments, he leans in, puts some heat in his words.

“I kind of like this, you taking charge of things. It might be nice to be on the receiving end and let you do what you want with me,” Patrick says, feeling his face flush. He’s thought about it before, when David makes quick corrections as they try out new positions, how good it feels to have something in his life that doesn’t require him to be the one thinking ahead and making plans. David’s fingers, which had been tracing curve of Patrick’s bicep, freeze for a moment on his arm. 

“That’s—” he starts, but has to clear his throat. “I would like to try that. Some other time. If you’re serious. But you’re tired and injured tonight, and I don’t want to try it like that. Is that okay?”

“Hey, of course that’s okay. But I am serious, for future reference.”

“Okay,” David says. Patrick feels David's hand slide into his hair, gripping tight to tip his head back. His breath is warm on his neck, his teeth grazing the skin along his veins, his voice low. “But maybe tonight we can practice a bit. You can lay down on the bed and let me reapply this paste on your back without trying to help.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, his desire for more bucking against the idea of lying prone and being gently ministered to.

David gets up and pulls Patrick with him, nudging him tenderly to the bed.

“On your stomach,” he says.

“Gotta say, David, this feels a little like what you said we weren’t going to do,” Patrick chides, grinning at David over his shoulder.

“We’re thirty seconds in and you’re already at me with that mouth of yours,” David tsks. 

“I’d like to be at you with more than my mouth,” Patrick says. He starts to roll over and laughs when David puts a hand on his arm, stopping him. 

“If it’s this hard for you to shut up and let someone do something nice for you, you’re going to need a lot of practice taking direction,” David says, helping him out of his shorts.

David settles in, straddling his back. The salve feels warm against his skin as David’s fingers rub it in gently. The scrape isn’t too bad—his clothes got the worst of it—but his body is stiff from the hard work at the orchard and the fall.

David finishes and bends down to kiss the back of his neck, his hand flat on Patrick’s other shoulder blade. Then his hands go to work, down his arms, across his back, into the sides of his hips, along his legs, around his ass. Patrick hears the sounds he’s making, but he doesn’t care. David’s hands are powerful with long, efficient fingers, pressure working against his knotted muscles, unwinding them.

When he has turned Patrick’s body loose and limp—with one notable exception—he helps Patrick roll on his side.

“How are you doing?” he whispers, kissing the skin along his shoulder, palming Patrick’s hard cock through his shorts.

“Can I—” Patrick asks, reaching for David’s pants. He never gets tired of touching David, of holding something in his hands that isn’t about meeting his basic needs. Although it’s starting to feel like he needs this. Needs David. It’s not just about wanting anymore.

David’s hand closes firmly on his wrist as he kisses the line of his jaw, his bottom lip.

“No,” David says, although it sounds strained. “You’re letting me take care of you, remember?”

“Ungh,” Patrick mutters into the pillow as David takes him in his hands. It feels like David might ruin him doing this. Like maybe that’s his plan. To ruin him. It’s working.

David uses his hands to activate all the nerves along Patrick’s legs, around his balls, into the soft space before his hole. David’s mouth is hot against his, an onslaught of sensations as the last of Patrick’s tension dissolves with a sharp shuddering gasp.

Unknown minutes later, David hasn’t stopped kissing him, touching him, as he drifts off to sleep. 

\-----

The following Friday, David wakes up halfway through the night to a mechanical whine. The bed is empty, the room too. Fear washes through him. He doesn’t like how many times in the last few days he has felt this way. David still feels shaken about the night June—the name Miguel gave Roland’s new friend—made her startling grand entrance. Yesterday, hoping to surprise Patrick and not finding him where he was supposed to be was even worse. David is used to losing people. He was conditioned for that well before the fires. But David feels consumed lately by how easy it might be to lose Patrick without doing anything to cause it and while being powerless to prevent it. And if he loses Patrick, he has no idea how to survive up here. 

Now, Patrick is gone again and there is yet another foreign noise coming from outside. 

This time, he decides he can’t sit and wait for things to resolve themselves.

“Patrick?” he calls, gingerly making his way downstairs in the dark. 

“I’m outside,” Patrick responds through the open door at the bottom of the stairs.

“What is that sound?”

“Cicadas, I think.” There’s awe in his voice, and a little fear, too.

“What the actual fuck?”

David pokes his head out, not sure how close the offending insects might be. There are a few black dots spinning around the dim green security light at the intersection.

“Lots of animals eat cicadas. Maybe this is why we’ve been seeing more birds lately,” Patrick says. “Do you think there’s some kind of animal sixth sense that told them this was happening?”

David can barely hear him. The noise is deafening, a ratcheting drone. 

“Where did they come from?” David asks.

“There are types of cicadas that live underground. They come up every fifteen years or so, I think. I wonder if that’s what this is. When I was in high school we got swarmed one summer. Ruined all our nighttime baseball games.”

“So this is hell-spawn, is what you’re saying,” David gripes.

Patrick turns and smiles at him. 

“Is that where you think we are? Hell?”

“No,” David says, because it’s true. Patrick is too good for that. “But I think I can make a decent argument for purgatory.”

“I see. C’mon, David. Let’s go back to bed.”

“And just ignore this?”

“Yes. Because I think I can make a decent argument _ against _purgatory.”

Later, with David panting, sated, and spent, they agree Patrick won the argument.

\-----

Patrick spends the next Monday starting off the latest batch of reentry recruits, his third group from Bunker 13. There are fifteen of them now, including Mr. Rose. This is how it often works, once a few brave souls make the move and everyone sees that they rarely come back. The rest follow quickly, the first taste of upstairs air, no matter the quality, sucking people out of the silo like a vacuum. 

Despite the family resemblance, Mr. Rose doesn’t approach training the same way David did. He is positive and excited to learn. He encourages everyone else, even though he’s usually the one struggling the most. Still, every time Patrick looks over the trainees while he’s talking and sees those eyebrows furrowed back at him, listening, he feels nervous. He really wants Mr. Rose to like him. 

He is in his office afterwards trying to reconfigure his compass navigation exercise for the larger group when Ray stops by.

“Knock, knock!” Ray says, cheesy grin set firmly in place until the door closes. 

“Hi Ray,” Patrick says. “Would you like to sit?”

“No,” Ray replies, serious now. “I am here to check in. Everything start smoothly with the latest group?” 

Ray never stops by just to check in. He always wants something, but Patrick will let him work up to it. 

“It’s going good. I think they’ll move faster than the last one. It’s going to take some work to get everyone settled upstairs.”

“Yes. That is why I wanted to talk to you. The Kurtz family from Bunker 11 is planning to relocate to Pinewood where they have a few cousins. They are looking for someone to escort them. I didn’t make any guarantees, but they have offered to pay extra if you and one of Ronnie’s crew can accompany them. This is not what we agreed to in the reentry clause of their contract, but I told them I would ask you. The choice is up to you.”

“Pinewood is a long way. It would probably take two weeks at least, round trip.” 

“I know. And you would need to stay at least a week there to get them settled.”

“I’m not sure we have what we’d need to move a whole family that far. It could be risky.”

“I have a few supplies I have held back for something like this. And you will have security with you at all times. I made no guarantees that you would go, but there is another reason I thought of you for the job.”

“What’s that?” Patrick asks, trying to keep his suspicion in check.

“I feel badly about the way it went with your parents. I am sorry we could not get them on the transport in time. There is a regional dispatch office in Pinewood. There is no guarantee, but you might find they can help you in your search. I would be happy to send you with something to help you grease the wheels.”

Patrick looks at Ray through narrowed eyes. Ray would certainly lie to someone to get them to do what he wants, but he has never done that with Patrick. 

“Who’s the security?”

“Ivan.”

“Ray. Ivan the Baker?” Patrick asks. No one knows the real origins of Ivan’s nickname, but the rumors are horrifying.

“He is the best I have. You will be safe with him.”

“When do you need to know?” Patrick asks. 

“End of the week.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you, Patrick. Door open or closed?” Ray asks brightly, stepping back into the corridor.

“You can leave it open,” Patrick replies.

Patrick tries to put his mind back to the task at hand, but he keeps thinking about David. It’s a lot of time away. He has been thinking about inviting David on the next trip he’s planning, but David is probably not ready for two or three weeks on the road. Patrick isn’t even sure he’s up for that himself.

He’ll have to give it some thought. 

Brain too far down this tangent to return to work, he decides to head up to Tier 1 in search of his boyfriend.

\-----

David wraps his arms tighter around him as Patrick pulls off the main highway onto a dirt track, slowing the motorcycle to go around a pair of swinging metal gates. Wherever they’re going is farther away than anywhere else they’ve been.

The cicadas start buzzing at twilight each night, making it difficult to go to sleep. The morning after the cicadas arrived, more birds began to roost on the buildings around town. A pair of black crows has chosen Patrick’s fence to loiter most mornings. David’s not sure if it’s the changes around him or the changes within him that have him feeling the most unsettled. He is hoping that a change of scene today with Patrick will help him reset.

They pull up in front of a medium-sized lake. It’s oddly formed, though, with sharp vertical rock walls bordering every side except the twenty-foot stretch where they parked. Lichen clings to the rock faces and young conifers have rooted into the top of the perimeter. A small island of rock near where they’re standing is covered in clinging plant growth. 

“What is this?” David asks, removing the helmet Patrick managed to acquire by trading a few of David’s stash of condoms. It doesn’t have a shield, so David has to wear his sunglasses and a bandana around his nose and mouth to protect him from the rush of air while they ride.

“It’s an old quarry. We call it Quarry Lake now.”

“Mmkay,” David says, looking around. “It’s nice, I guess, but what are we doing here?”

“Going for a swim,” Patrick says.

“Um, no, _ we _ are not,” David says. David does not do lakes. He barely does pools unless they are exclusive and private. 

“Well, fine, I’m going for a swim,” Patrick says. 

“Did you even bring a swimsuit?”

“Nope,” Patrick replies.

David watches, stunned, as he sheds his clothes, draping them over the motorcycle. He jumps off the edge into the water below, and fine, David can appreciate the performance as he flies through the air naked. Patrick emerges from the water, pushing his wet hair back from his face and turning toward David.

“I should just leave with your clothes,” David says, trying to hold on to his irritation.

“The water feels really good, David. It’s nice and cool.”

Patrick treads water back towards the edge. 

“I believe when you picked me up, you said you had something planned you thought I’d like,” David says.

“I did.”

“Okay, so when does that part start?” David asks. Patrick smiles again, his upside-down one that makes David’s stomach do a flip-flop of its own.

“I do think you’ll like this. I didn’t think you would try it necessarily, but I thought you would like it if you did,” Patrick says.

“And how did you imagine it going? Me trying it.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d want to follow my naked ass wherever it went,” Patrick says, grinning. 

David wrestles his smile between his teeth and rolls his eyes.

“I see.”

“You can sit there if you want,” Patrick says, shrugging as much as he can while treading water. 

He tips backwards, arms out, letting himself float on the surface. He swishes his arms through the water, eyes closed, and David gets a good picture of what he’s missing.

David sighs. Trying not to think too hard about it, he sheds his own clothes and jumps off the ledge, splashing next to Patrick. 

“You think you have me all figured out,” David says, reeling him in by his foot. 

Patrick rights himself, using a root clinging stubbornly to the rock face nearest him to keep himself in one place.

“No. But I’m trying very hard,” Patrick says. 

David grins against his lips. It feels good to be kissing him like this, but it doesn’t soothe the anxiety that has taken root in his gut.

“Are you sure there are no mutant apocalyptic sea serpants or anything in here?” David asks. It’s not really why he is nervous, but it seems like a place to start.

“How sure do I need to be?” Patrick asks.

“Eight-seven percent minimum.”

“I’d say I’m at ninety-one percent. Maybe ninety-two.”

“What about fish?”

“No fish yet. The plan is to move the fish over here from the tanks in the silos once they’re decommissioned.”

“Hm, I guess I better enjoy the lake now then,” David says. 

“I guess you better,” Patrick agrees.

Patrick holds on to the root with one hand and pulls David in with the other gripping his thigh, inviting David to wrap his legs around him. He kisses him, presses against him, hand massaging into his back as their heads tilt for a better alignment. David lets himself get lost in it for a while, in the simple joy of Patrick’s naked body slick and smooth against his own.

They spend the rest of the afternoon talking, and touching, and swimming. Patrick packed snacks which they enjoy on the bank before hopping back in the water.

It does feel good, David thinks, to be able to swim in the lake, like they’ve found a hiding place from the heavy, sticky heat. He floats next to Patrick, the back half of him buoyant and cool in the water, the top half warm against the heavy air. The swirl of the water against his neck eases the headache he’s been grappling with off and on since that awful night June arrived.

“Have you given any more thought to moving upstairs for good?” Patrick asks, swimming over and holding on to a split in the rock. 

“Mm, some,” David says. “It’s been kind of a rough week up here, though.”

“Yeah. It has,” Patrick agrees. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Okay. Well I’m sorry I made you worry when I didn’t come back from the orchard. I forget, sometimes, that someone’s keeping track. That one is my fault at least a little.”

“Fine,” David says, offering a smile. “We can say that one is your fault.”

“You were really great that night I got hurt though. Strong and bossy, but in like a hot way?”

“Mm,” David says. “That does sound like me.” 

David can still feel the way the heat licked through him when Patrick suggested he might enjoy letting David take control sometimes. It’s not a role David typically enjoyed with previous partners. With Patrick, the only person he knows who seems to keep pace with this world, the idea is exhilarating.

David pulls him closer so this time Patrick’s legs wrap around him, clinging to his hips, his chin notched over David’s shoulder.

“There is something I wanted to talk to you about,” Patrick says, fingers painting lines in the water on David’s back.

“Okay.”

“Ray wants me to help a family move to Pinewood. I have to let him know tomorrow if I’m going.”

“Pinewood? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s west down the old highway seventeen. Probably five days’ walk.”

“Five days?” David says, reeling.

“Yeah. Longer back probably. And I’d be there for a week.”

“So what? Two and a half weeks? Three?”

“Three most likely.”

“And when would you leave?”

“It was originally supposed to be next week, but they want to leave Sunday so we can get there before someone’s birthday apparently.”

“That’s in three days.” David grips the wall harder as he rears back. Patrick slips off his hips, reaching for his own hold so he doesn't sink.

“I know. It’s fast.”

“Patrick—” David doesn’t know where to start. The thoughts that have been circling around him seem to close ranks, taunting him one after another. The fears he’s been trying to ignore, feelings he wants to dismiss. 

“David, there’s a dispatch office there that’s working on reuniting lost families. They might have information about mine.”

“So that’s what this really is, then.”

Patrick’s eyes narrow at that, sharp and unfriendly. He’s reflecting all the confusion and hurt and frustration David is feeling. David hates the way it looks on him, like they’re in a sinking ship and David is ripping open the hull instead of helping to bail them out.

“What do you mean, that’s what this really is? Are you mad that I’m trying to find my family?”

“No. Or yes, possibly, but not the rational parts of me. Of course I want you to find them. It’s just, the whole time you were sitting there by the door that night, I kept thinking ‘what if something happens to him?’ Every time you leave on one of these errands for Ray or to ask about your parents I think that. And then you didn’t come home that day, and I spent the whole day with that thought, but also ‘if he’s gone this time, what happens to me?’ And the only answer I come to is that I would never make it up here on my own.”

“David, of course you would. People would help you the way they did me. But that’s not going to happen anyway. Ray is sending security with me. I’ll be fine.”

“Stop. You can’t make promises like that, that you’ll be fine, that nothing will happen to you. And you definitely can’t take risks like going on these fact-finding missions and expect me to believe they’re not dangerous. Or at the very least unpredictable. I’m not stupid.”

“Okay,” Patrick says. His eyes are impartial. He’s dropped that fucking mask in front of them. Guarded. The ship has taken on too much water to bail out now. “I guess I’m confused about what you want here. You want me to find my family, but you want me to stop looking for them?”

David stares at the wall next to them, at the dark lines and cracks up its face, at the tooling marks from where the adjacent stone was sheared off. When he looks back at Patrick, he feels like a piece of him has sheared off as well. 

“You should go,” David says finally. “I can stay at your place. Move upstairs while you're gone. Take care of things. Maybe a little space will give me some time with this. To figure out what I want.”

“Space,” Patrick says, voice flat. He shakes his head and blinks hard. “All right. If that’s what you want, I guess I’ll go.”

\-----

“So I don’t understand . . . Did you break up with him?” Stevie asks later. He’d gone straight to her chamber when Patrick dropped him off a the silo, telling her the whole story balled up on the corner of her couch. 

“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to. But we were talking and then he just sort of got out of the water and dried off and said he needed to get back. He barely said anything else to me.”

“Not even when he dropped you off?”

“He said he’d be busy packing and getting ready for the trip but that I should come by Saturday afternoon and say goodbye.”

Stevie is quiet. Sympathetic even. It’s very strange to see her big eyes looking at him this way, like he’s possibly an idiot but an idiot she loves nonetheless. 

“And you’re staying upstairs in his place.”

“Yes. While he’s gone. And then . . . I don’t know I guess.”

“And if he doesn’t come back?” she asks. It’s gentle, but direct.

He just shakes his head, blinking hard against the tears. Stevie sits down next to him, pulling him close.

“Are you and Jake still—”

“No. He’s lives upstairs now. Why?”

“Just trying to steer the conversation to your life choices.” 

“That was a _ good _ choice, though.”

She taps his leg with her toe as best she can as they huddle together.

“Do you miss him?”

“Not really. I’m really going to miss you when you leave, though” she says, which is not fair. He’s at his limit for feelings today and her job as best friend is to help with that, not pile on. 

“I’ll still come visit you. And you can come visit too. If you want.”

“Maybe I will,” she says. “Ray said I could do this round of training.”

“Good. Once you can come upstairs more, I’ll have you over for dinner.”

“It’s times like this I really wish I still had weed. Or whiskey.”

David snorts and kisses the top of her head. He feels the same way right now.

“You made living down here bearable,” he says into her hair. “You’re the only reason I’m getting out alive.”

“I know. It was really hard taking care of you,” she says, but she’s sniffling and wiping tears and nestling close, so he knows that she knows they took care of each other.

\-----

It’s not hard for Patrick to keep busy after the quarry. There is too much to do, really, between when he decides to go and when they need to leave. So he only has a little time for wallowing. He doesn’t think they broke up, exactly, but they’re taking a break. He thinks. Which is good if David is still feeling like he doesn’t belong up here, with Patrick. 

He’s stuffing the last of his clothes into his traveling backpack when David knocks on the door frame of the upper room. 

“Hey,” Patrick says, trying for warmth. 

“Hi. You said to come by, so.”

“Yeah. I’m really glad you did. I’m about to head out actually.”

“I thought you were leaving tomorrow.”

“Bunker 11 is a long walk. I decided to stay over there so we’re ready to leave early.”

“You’re sleeping in the bunker?” David asks, making one of the faces Patrick loves. 

“No. I’ll probably sleep in my tent nearby. The dry run will help me make sure I didn’t forget anything for setting up camp before we leave.”

“Sounds like a plan,” David says, crossing his arms uncomfortably.

Patrick pulls the drawstrings on his bag to close the main pouch and then clips the soft lid into place. He sets it on the floor near his bed.

“You still good to watch over this place?” he asks. 

“Yeah. Sure. I'm thinking I'll bring everything I need tomorrow and . . . move up here until you get back I guess,” David hasn’t moved from the door. They’re standing fifteen feet apart across the room. It feels like fifty.

“Thanks,” Patrick says.

“Are we okay?” David asks.

“Yeah. I’ve just been trying to deal with everything, getting ready to go. And I think you were right. It’s probably better if we take this time to figure out what we want and don’t push anything.”

“Oh. Is that what I said?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“I see.”

“Hey, I have something for you, though,” Patrick says, moving over to the shelf. He takes the bottle he picked up that morning and hands it to David.

“Is that wine?” David asks.

“It’s fruit wine?” Patrick says, not sure that qualifies as wine to David. “It’s made from blackberries. Herb makes it. Anyway, It’s a tradition for everyone in the community to share something with whoever moves upstairs in their first two weeks. Since I’m technically going to miss your official reentry, I wanted to give you your housewarming gift now.”

“Will you have a glass with me?” David asks. 

Patrick isn’t at all sure he can keep up the brave face for another ten minutes, but he decides to try.

“Sure.”

He takes two mugs off the shelf while David pulls the cork. He pours them each a good amount, and they sit down.

“What happened to your hand?” Patrick asks, noticing the gray cloth poking out from the cuff of David’s sweater. The part of the wrap over the pad of his thumb is dark red.

“I cut myself on the prongs of one of those big rakes when I was helping Mr. Hockley’s daughter in the fields this morning.”

“Is it bad? Let me see,” Patrick says.

David unties the fabric and holds his hand out, taking a sip of wine as Patrick cautiously pulls back the bandage. It looks bad, about an inch long and red and puffy.

“David, you have to see Ted,” Patrick says. 

“I will,” David shrugs.

“You should see him tonight before you go back.”

“Alexis said he’s at Bunker 11. He went to drop off first aid stuff for your trek.”

“Oh. Well I’m going to find him when I get there and tell him to meet you tomorrow. What time?”

“Patrick, I’m fine. I’ll track him down.”

Patrick's hands clench into fists on the table. 

“David, if you care about me at all, you will let me arrange for him to meet you at his clinic tomorrow morning. You’re not the only one who gets to be worried about someone they care about being hurt. That could be a serious injury if it’s not taken care of properly.”

“Okay,” David says on a breath. “I’ll try to get there by ten.”

Patrick rewraps his hand and leans back in his chair, taking a long sip of the wine.

“I have to get going soon,” Patrick says. 

He’s overwhelmed suddenly by the prospect of saying goodbye to David, of leaving things this way, talking about space and time to think and choices like he doesn’t know what he wants when he absolutely fucking does. 

“Thanks for the wine. Really. And be safe, okay?” David pleads softly.

“I will. We’ll have security. And it’s a well-traveled road once we pass Walnut Creek, or so I hear.”

“Still,” David says, finishing the last of his wine and standing. Patrick stands too.

“Will you check in with me when you get back?” David asks.

“Sure,” Patrick says.

Then David collapses into him, wrapping him up in a long squeeze. He holds tight, breathing hard, like he can’t bear the thought of letting Patrick leave, of something happening to him, without touching him at least a little. Which is good, because Patrick feels the same way. He squeezes back as hard as he can.

“Let’s make sure we talk. When you get back,” David adds, releasing him. “When you check in.”

Patrick feels his jaw drop a little. He closes it and nods.

“I’d like that.”

“Okay. I’ll see you then,” David says, rubbing his eyes and turning for the door. Patrick hears his feet hit the treads of the stairs and the swing of the door at the bottom, and he’s gone.

\-----

Ted’s clinic is the front room of his house, a good-sized structure with gray-blue wood siding and an array of solar panels on the roof. It’s located about a mile closer to the bunkers and farms than the town center. Ted is waiting when he arrives, cleaning a few medical instruments in boiling water. 

“Hi, David, have a seat” Ted says. David sits where he indicates on a low table near a lamp. “I heard today is your official Reentry Day.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess it is,” David realizes. He’s spending his first night up here alone officially. He still hasn’t told anyone about the two disastrous nights he tried to stay upstairs the last time Patrick left town. 

“Well happy Reentry Day, buddy.” 

“Thanks.” 

Ted gives him a big smile like it’s a milestone or an achievement, like a birthday or graduation. He watches Ted prep the table as that phrase rattles around in his head. _ Reentry Day_. So much of reentry has been about Patrick. Although he wouldn’t trade any of it, he has forgotten some of his initial motivation. He has gotten wrapped up in Patrick, of course, but also in the minutia, the frustration of every possible choice being an unpleasant one. He has lost track of the whole point of this, which is to be free to want something again, to have the luxury of making a fucking choice at all.

“So,” Ted says, clasping his hands together. “Patrick said you cut yourself on some farm equipment and you need stitches. No _cuts_, no glory I always say.”

“Stitches?” David squawks.

“Yeah. And wow, he is right,” Ted says, removing the bandage. “It’s pretty bad. Lucky for you, I have a new and improved numbing agent.”

“Lucky me,” David says tightly.

Ted talks a little about plants he’s starting to experiment with as he cleans the wound using a squirt bottle of warm, recently boiling water. On David’s hand he is planning to use minced plantain—“the weed not the fruit, because that would be bananas”—which he applies with a gloved finger under the lamp. 

David hisses as Ted starts the sutures. 

“So not totally numb then,” he gripes. 

“Sorry, bud,” Ted says, apologetically.

As he’s working, Alexis breezes in and pecks Ted lightly on the cheek. David tries not to be jealous of what they have, of how easy it has been for Alexis to see the adventure through the crisis when it comes to life upstairs.

“Ooh, ouch, David,” she says, but she takes his uninjured hand with a firm squeeze, and David is immediately grateful she’s here.

She stays with him for the rest of the procedure, chattering at him, distracting him, insulting him, loving him.

It doesn’t last long, thankfully, but once Ted is finished, he picks up another dish and spreads a different paste over the cut. This one burns worse than the stitches. 

David lets out an angry, “Fuuuck, Ted.”

“You want to stay for lunch?” Alexis asks, rubbing David’s back through the pain.

“Sure. That sounds nice.”

“Okay. I’ll go get it started.”

“The stew is already on the fire out back, babe. All you have to do is stir it,” Ted says.

“Thanks, babe,” she says, kissing his cheek again. 

At the door, she gives David a little wave and a look that says she knows how lucky she is, and then she’s off to put lunch together for them.

“How long since you first came upstairs?” Ted asks when they’re alone again.

“Almost twelve weeks.”

“Hey if this is the first I’m seeing you, you’re doing pretty good,” Ted says. He means it to be encouraging, but it just makes David think about how easy he’s had it, spending most of his time up here with Patrick.

“Can I ask you a question?” David asks as Ted starts to clean his forceps and suture needle.

“What’s up?”

“Does it ever bother you to have someone depending on you, needing you to take care of them all the time?”

“What, like patients?” Ted asks. That’s not what David meant, but it answers his question well enough. Still, he wants to hear more.

“I mean like Alexis.” 

Ted looks up, puzzled. 

“She takes care of herself,” he shrugs. 

“Yeah, but you do stuff for her that a lot of people have to do on their own.”

“Sure. We do things for each other. That’s part of a relationship,” Ted says. 

He pauses his cleaning and looks at David again, like he’s suddenly realized what they’re actually talking about. David had asked Alexis once in Bunker 13 what made her interested in Ted, beyond the obvious. She’d pulled her knees to her chin and told him in her most vulnerable voice that Ted has learned that caring for wounds in this world is caring about more than just the surface damage. That he’s the most compassionate person she’s ever met. 

“I spend all day taking care of other people, doing things for other people,” Ted explains. “Those of us who came upstairs first, that’s what our lives have become. And we’re happy to do it, usually. We never really had the luxury of just worrying about ourselves. That’s what Alexis does. She worries about me. She tries to make hard things fun. She takes care of me—not like in a food and chores kind of way so much—but in an emotional way. She makes space for me.”

“Are we talking about my _ sister _ Alexis? Because that seems very out of character for her.”

“The very same,” Ted says, then smiles a big dopey smile like a man in love. “Look I don’t know what happened with you and Patrick, but if you think you might have a shot at having something like that with him? Don’t let it go.”

As Ted wraps a clean bandage around his hand, David wonders what it might mean to make space for Patrick. To make hard things fun.

“Hey Ted?” David asks, an idea springing suddenly to life.

“Yeah?” Ted turns his hand once more time to make sure all looks good before handing it back.

“What do you know about baseball?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June, the disruptive canine, is named after a character from _The Forsyte Saga_ by John Galsworthy. Galsworthy’s first novel is entitled _Jocelyn_. The Forsytes are another family that Ray Butani might label as having complicated interpersonal dynamics. There is also a BBC television series based on the novels if you're interested, although it's been too long since I've seen it to tell you if it's worth your time (helpful, I know).
> 
> The medicinal use of plants in this chapter is based on the sort of research one does when they are writing fanfic for fun (which is to say Google, some personal experience, and a little asking around of people who Know Things). I would hope this goes without saying but . . . none of the remedies in this chapter should be construed as proper medical advice.


	8. Into the light of a dark black night

The Monday after Patrick leaves, people from the community start dropping by. It drives David crazy at first to have strangers popping in, but he learns to welcome them. Each person introduces themselves, tells a little of their story, shares what they like to do in case he needs help with anything. And then each person leaves him with something they’ve made or grown or hunted.

As one week turns into two, there is a lot about life upstairs that David continues to struggle with. The amount of effort needed to do small things like fixing breakfast. The lack of hot showers combined with feeling constantly grimy. The knowledge that his stash of skin and hair care products will eventually be too old or used up. The deafening quiet which, even broken up by the earthly sounds starting to fill in around his day, seems to force his thoughts to fill the void. 

A week after he had started staying at Patrick’s, he’d returned to his old chamber, unable to cope with another night alone. It had been a long night, trying to sleep in the silo, like he was stuck in a void between worlds. He’d decided the next morning that he had spent his last night underground.

There is a lot about life upstairs that David begins to enjoy, once he commits to it. The way the community surrounds him is a surprise. All those years of living with his family without any sufficient boundaries has helped him adapt to this world, where people drop in and chat, and sometimes stay and read a book or help with chores without chatting, just to be alone together. 

He loves that despite having developed a routine, he’s not at the mercy of time. That he can do what he wants in the order he wants to.

He even loves the new world landscape, the way nature has reclaimed the vacated spaces, transforming parking lots and unoccupied buildings and taking them back for itself. It gives him hope that he can eventually learn to reclaim the voice of his former self that mocks him sometimes, that says David Rose can only thrive in an easy world.

\-----

Sensing that David might appreciate the company, Alexis and Ted arrange for his dad to come upstairs for dinner in the last weekend before Patrick is supposed to come back.

While the three of them talk at the picnic table, David stirs the pot of bean and vegetable soup on the radiator-turned-oven rack over the open fire and replaces the lid. Roland and June lay together on the ground, tails thumping, hoping for scraps.

His dad follows him around as he does the evening chores while the soup is cooking. Johnny helps where he can and tries—upon David’s repeated pleas—not to request a narration of everything David is doing. As annoying as it is to be questioned incessantly, it feels good to be viewed as someone competent enough to show his dad the basics upstairs. 

David sets up the water filter to drip overnight into the large jar where he keeps his drinking water. He stirs a little mint from the planter on the side of the building into the pitcher he places at the table. He pauses to check on the garden, making sure there are no pests or weeds that need tending to. He folds up the small solar panel that Ray provided in his reentry package and tucks it away in the safe. It doesn’t provide much power, but it allows him to have the strand of LED lights in the evening to write or read by without the effort of the pedal generator. And even after two weeks, he can’t do any of these things without aching for Patrick. 

He checks on his experiment on a shelf in the back storage room of the store, a sieved sweet potato concoction that he’s trying to preserve using canning methods. He has a few jars of each variety, one with honey and one with water. He’s trying to determine the shelf life of each type, before and after opening. One of the neighbors, an older woman named Dot, was nice enough to answer his questions about natural preservatives without asking too many questions of her own. She must have told other people, though, because he has had a few neighbors stop by to make discreet inquiries about what he is working on, like they maybe already know.

Ted removed the stitches in his hand four days earlier. Ted’s poultices seem to be working. His hand is back to a normal size, the cut reduced to a red line. David is stupidly proud to have a mark on him now. He could never have imagined that years ago, much less months ago. The feeling of being taunted by his former self dissipates every day he spends upstairs, helping in the community, working in the garden, surviving. He feels strong and capable, maybe even a little brave.

Ted must have received some fruit wine from Herb because he brought it as his contribution to dinner. The wine is surprisingly good, and not even based on the lower bar David uses to evaluate most things in the world these days. Drinking it reminds him of Patrick and triggers the sinking feeling in his gut. He needs Patrick to come home safely or he’ll never forgive himself for letting Patrick leave without telling him everything he feels and wants and hopes they can have. For not promising that they will find a way to get there together.

Once the soup is ready, David stretches it to four bowls and tosses a few chunks of stewed carrot to the dogs. The meal is a little bland, but it’s also not burnt and has the right consistency, so David feels like he can serve it without being embarrassed. 

Somehow they get on the topic of the origin story of his parents’ marriage—or at least his dad and Ted do. David has heard all of it, so he tunes them out mostly, making faces with Alexis and mouthing the long-ago memorized words to the story. For his part, Roland sits under the table and rests his head on the bench next to Johnny, like he wants to listen in. 

“You know I remember when your mother and I met in 1971 in California. She was in L.A. doing the T.V. show, and I was trying to find investors for a business idea I’d had. We were at the same party at the Beverly Hilton. She was there trying to attract the attention of John Cougar Mellencamp. But I was the one that got to take her home.”

“Ew,” Alexis says. “Can we _ not _hear the rest of this?”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, honey,” his father says, accustomed to her interjections. “I remember we sat in my car in her driveway talking about growing up in the Sixties. It seemed like every day something horrible was happening, like the world was ending. It didn’t of course, but there was still something of a sense of things being different when it was all over. You know that’s why a lot of us weren’t prepared this time. We’d seen things disintegrate before and it always worked out. I think that’s what we thought would happen this time too.”

“My grandma used to talk about that time a lot,” Ted says. “She’d say, ‘Theodore, don’t you ever let someone tell you your choices are either to make history or be at the mercy of it. It’s a false choice. You just try to make someone’s day brighter, show a little kindness to someone who isn’t used to it. If everyone does that, history will take care of itself.’ I don’t know how true that is, really, but I think about that all the time now. The false choice.”

David half-listens to his dad tell the story of his fourth date with his mom, the one where he says he knew he was going to marry her. The way he describes deciding then and there that this was it for him.

“Sometimes you just know,” his dad says, a reflective smile on his face. 

David hasn’t said much the whole night. And they are nowhere near the topic of David and Patrick’s relationship. But those words, _ false choice_, nag at David. Has he been making one with Patrick? Did he tell himself he had to be alone or be dependent, that there was nothing in between? Nothing else that mattered?

He has a plan he is hoping to execute when Patrick gets back, but he still doesn’t know exactly what he wants to say or how he wants to move forward. Sitting there in the dimming light of evening, he starts to feel the shape of it.

\-----

Patrick returns home after twenty-one days on the road more tired than he has ever been. It’s early Sunday morning. He’s been up since the murky sky lightened, the sun rising somewhere unseen beyond the ever-present clouds. Anxious to be home, he finished the last five miles in under two hours.

Everything appears to be in order as he enters the back through the gate. The garden looks neat and well-tended, a towel hanging on the clothesline. It’s the towel David uses when he stays over because it’s larger than the others and he likes the coverage he gets going in and out of the outdoor shower. Seeing the towel feels good. It feels like he is really coming home. He wonders if David will be here. If he’s not, Patrick should probably try to nap a little before going to find him. His brain is foggy from the long journey, and he needs a clear head to handle the conversation he wants to have.

All his plans evaporate when he goes upstairs to find a repurposed pickle jar on his table filled with wild flowers. There’s a folded note standing tented in front of it. Patrick snatches it up quickly and opens it.

_ Meet me in the high school gym today after lunch. _ _  
_ _ I’ll be the one in black. _

It’s not signed, but he knows who it’s from. Patrick got home later than anticipated, but they sent word ahead at the last major town they stopped in with someone who was traveling in this direction. David must have heard he was on his way.

It’s still morning, so he opens his pack and puts a few things away, speculating about what David has planned. Patrick has spent most of his trek to and from Pinewood trying to accept whatever David’s decision might be. His life has been hard the last few years, but nothing has been harder than walking home across the quiet landscape and trying to figure out how he might move on from David Rose.

But the way he had looked when they shared the wine, and now the flowers, the note, the high school . . . There’s no use trying to keep his hopes in check anymore. They’re flying around the room. Patrick wants to go to the high school now so he can be there right when David arrives, but he knows he needs a nap and a shower at the very least. 

He showers first, cleaning off the dust from the road. He cranks the dial on an egg timer to go off in an hour and drops quickly to sleep. 

When he wakes up, having cranked the egg timer for an additional hour, Patrick stresses over what to wear for the first time in the new world. He settles on a slate blue T-shirt, no longer caring that someone might ogle at his scar. David hates his pants that zip off at the knee, so he looks for another pair that’s not filthy from his trip and decides on a pair of jeans his ex-girlfriend had convinced him to get instead of the straight-legged ones he always used to wear. They’re still nice; he doesn’t have much use for snug-fitting denim in the new world. He finds a pair of sneakers that are in good shape for a similar reason and decides this will have to do. 

Upon inspection in the small pocket mirror—the only one he owns—he sees his face is sunburned and dry from the road. He can’t do much about that. It seems unfair that they should be able to be burned by a sun they never get to see, but since it also grows their plants and powers the silos, he is willing to tolerate a little raw skin in exchange for a safe journey.

It all takes longer than he wants it to. George stops by to hear how everything went, delays him with updates on the gossip around town, but at least he brings two thick slices of smoked turkey so Patrick gets some protein. Patrick pulls a carrot from the garden to eat on the way. 

The door is already open when he gets to the high school. David is pacing along the half-court line, dressed about as casually as Patrick has ever seen him outside his home in a black T-shirt and tight-fitting jeans with holes at the knees.

The light filters through the glass block in the nearest window, and David has stopped right in its pool on the floor. He looks like he’s standing in a spotlight. David’s hair is a little long, higher even than usual, and he looks smaller and softer in the fitted black clothes. It seems the bones of his face are sharper, his neck longer. Patrick has to stop to catch his breath for a minute.

\-----

“I got your note,” David hears Patrick behind him. It’s his just-any-normal-day voice, which carries across the gym. 

“You’re back,” David says softly when Patrick is finally standing in front of him, feet on the lightning bolt logo on the floor. “Your face looks sore.” David traces his fingers lightly over the raw skin on the bridge of Patrick’s nose. Patrick’s eyes widen in surprise. 

“I’m back. You’re starting to get calluses.” 

David shrugs but smiles, proud. 

“I’ve been busy. How was it?”

“Good, I think. Ivan the Baker, it turns out, is a big teddy bear who actually aspires to be a baker and has never once cooked his victims. He’s trying to figure out yeast cultures, which bodes well for pizza crust in the future. The Kurtzes are now safely rejoined with their extended family in Pinewood. And I found a regional dispatch office that’s going to put a message out that I’m alive, living here, in case anyone in my family is looking.”

The way he says it, like he’s just catching David up on the day, like they are together and happy and just checking in, makes David’s heart thump wildly in his chest.

“Did you get any leads on your family?” David asks. “Any idea where they might have gone?”

“No. And I think I’m going to stop looking for a while, let the word spread a bit. The dispatch office started a log of everyone who is looking, where they are living. Maybe in another year or two there will be more efficient ways to search. As I was walking home, I realized how much I wanted to just be back here. To not have to be leaving all the time.” 

David watches him talk, unable to suppress a small smile. David knows now that he needed this time to work through everything, but he could have handled it better. Communicated better. And now he has forgotten how he planned to start. 

“Anyway, how are you?” Patrick asks. “I heard from George that people have been dropping off sweet potatoes?” 

“Oh, that. I was just using them for some experiments,” David says.

Patrick pauses for a moment, taking that in. Then his face breaks into a wide smile.

“So what you’re saying is you found your niche?” Patrick asks. “And that niche is making lube?”

“We’re not doing _ niche_. It was two people. I’m not aiming to be the regional lube supplier. But it has become quite an effective trading tool.”

“I see,” Patrick says, laughing. He crosses his arms, his forearms strong across his chest. 

“I refuse to become a niche. You said I can be whoever I want. It’s not that.”

“Okay.”

“If you must know, I’m also working on a beeswax-based moisturizer, so.”

“That still sounds kind of like a niche to me.” His smile is so big, his eyes so warm, David feels like they might burn through him. 

“You know this is not how I planned this to go,” David says. 

“How did you plan this to go?” Patrick asks. 

David just shakes his head, blinking his eyes hard, relieved Patrick is here. Home.

“Can I kiss you?” David says. “I know that you, uh, deserve explanations. Um, declarations and other . . . words. And I’ll try to come up with them. But all I can think about right now is how much I want to kiss you again. To be people who kiss each other again.”

“Are you . . . I mean do you want to—”

“I hate all this space between us,” David says, gesturing back and forth with his hands.

“Then I think you should kiss me,” Patrick says, clearly overcome.

David remembers that first kiss in the bunker, the way he wanted to just crash into Patrick. This time he does, snaking his arms over his shoulders and around his neck as their mouths find their way home. He feels Patrick’s lips against his neck as they cling tight to each other, needing to be closer than even kissing will allow. 

“I made you something while I was walking last week,” Patrick says when they part. “I didn’t have a lot of materials to pick from, so it’s fine if you’d rather use it as a bookmark or something. I just thought I might need an olive branch to get you to talk to me after the way I acted that day we went to the quarry.”

Patrick pulls something out of his pocket and hands it to David. It’s a bracelet made of woven black strands, each one thin and smooth.

“Is it rubber?” he asks. 

“Yeah. From bike tires.”

It’s not the style he used to wear, the one he curated to both protect and define who he is. The bracelet is a little rougher, easier, closer to who he is with Patrick. To the man he’s becoming everywhere else.

“Can you tie it on?” David asks, holding out his wrist.

“You really don’t have to wear it.”

“Patrick, I love it. Tie it on.”

Patrick looks up sharply at that. David offers a small smile, a real smile.

“I have something for you too, but I can’t give it to you until you’re done putting this on me.”

“Okay. I’m glad you like it,” he says, tying a double knot and snipping the ends with his pocket multitool.

“I love it. Thank you,” David repeats. “Now follow me. I want to show you your surprise.”

\-----

They go back out the side door and around behind the building. The field isn’t much. It’s scrubby, paths between the bases more dirt than sand, with dull green grass growing in from the edges. The bases themselves are pitted and disintegrating. There are about thirty people here, including his friends who must have been gathered for the day. Most everyone has a glove and a few are tossing baseballs back and forth. 

“David, this is—” Patrick has to stop, his voice too thick for words. 

“You said, once, that the thing you miss the most is the baseball. So, I bring you the baseball.”

“Here’s your glove, buddy,” Ted adds, handing him the glove David borrowed from Patrick’s home when he left early that morning.

No one needs to know Patrick personally to see he’s deeply moved. But they do know him, his friends, the people he has built this life with, so they smile at him fondly and let him catch up.

“And the balls and bats and gloves came from the school?” Patrick asks.

“Yeah. From the closet we found. Now I heard you were a good catcher. So prove it.”

Patrick doesn’t care that thirty people are standing around waiting for them. He plants an enthusiastic, open-mouthed kiss on David’s lips. 

Later, after an afternoon of playing, Patrick pulls David close to him again.

“You hit a pretty nice line drive over the shortstop at the end there, David.”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” David grins, “But I’m going to take it as a compliment.”

“You should.”

“I still can’t believe you made me play. I was supposed to be a spectator.”

“Hey,” Patrick says, turning serious, resting his forehead against David’s. “This is the best thing anyone has ever done for me. In the old world or in this one.”

\-----

Later that night, after David makes dinner while Patrick tends to the garden and does the evening chores, they sit down at the table upstairs to eat. It’s October now, and although winter never comes in earnest, it gets a little colder at night. Roland and June were banned for the evening after David gave them both a piece of goat cheese and shut them outside the gate. One of David’s first accomplishments when he was here alone was to nail a board over the missing glass on the front door—so the dogs will have to find somewhere else to spend the night.

“The last time we were sitting here, you said we should make sure we talk when I get back,” Patrick starts. It’s not a question, but David hears it anyway.

“When I said I needed space, it was never about you, about us,” David says. He has more or less figured out what it was about. He hopes he can explain. “I always worry about you. I think that’s a little bit just how I am. But also we had a week or two where I was. Losing you. Over and over again. And I believed that if I lost you I would lose all of this. Upstairs. I needed to know if that was in my head, or if it was true. If I could have this without you.”

“I figured that out, I think, one of the four million times I played everything back while I was walking. But I told you that we could find you a place, right? You don’t have to move here.”

“I know. And I know I should have just talked to you about the way I was feeling. I guess I thought that if you knew how scared I was up here, you wouldn’t be interested in me.”

“David, I can’t even bring myself to spend one night in the bunker, a place that’s literally built for protection. Are you any less interested in me for that?”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay. Good.” Patrick kisses him quickly. He can’t seem to help himself. “I’m really grateful you took care of everything here, but you should know that if having your own place for a while is important to you, I want that for you. You don’t have to live here just to make things easier. If you decide to move in at some point, it should be about more than efficiency.”

“I know that now. And I actually did find a place I like.”

“You did? One of the ones we looked at?”

“No. Do you want to see it? It’s close by. We can get there and back before it’s too dark.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says.

“Okay, let’s go.”

David takes them down through the store and out the side door, around the front. There’s a small building connected to the store with a narrow front porch and large windows. The first floor is mostly taken up with the store’s former office where the safe is located. David grins back at Patrick as he walks up the front porch and opens the door.

“David, I’ve been in this side before. The second floor has big holes in the floor from a water leak and the porch—” Patrick looks down before leaving the top step and sees that the broken porch boards have been repaired. 

“Remember how I said the lube was an effective trading tool? Jake, it turns out, is desperate to trade. Lube and condoms, that is, not um, anything else.”

Patrick gives David another one of his looks that seems to convey both confidence in David and awe at whatever he’s just done. 

“So Jake has been here making repairs?” Patrick asks.

“He has. He has one more thing to do to finish it, but I wanted to ask you if it was okay first. C’mon.”

The first floor is just a small foyer with the stairs leading up to the second floor. The upper level is divided into two rooms and a now unusable bathroom. One room is full of David’s clothes hanging from steel pipes mounted on three of the four walls, clearly Jake’s handiwork. The other is empty except for a small bookshelf with a few of David’s things from the silo. 

“This is nice,” Patrick says, looking around. The room faces west, getting good light in the evening. There’s a large area of the floor that has been repaired using planks from somewhere else. They’re about the same size as the original boards but a different color. 

“Can’t beat the commute,” David says, making Patrick laugh.

“Looks like you got everything all set up but the furniture.”

“I had some help. George and Robin and Ted and a few other people in addition to Jake. I, um, understand what you meant, now. About help. That everyone needs it.”

“Hm,” Patrick nods. “I like it. But what would you have done if I’d come back and said I didn’t want you here?”

“I had a speech just in case. I was planning to convince you that I’m actually really good for you?”

“Oh really? What was your argument?” He tucks his smile between his lips and crosses his arms in his best impression of a tough customer. 

“Before you met me, you lived your whole life for other people. I think being with me is something you do just for you. For us, obviously. But for you. I give you a place where you can be selfish sometimes.” David runs his hands along Patrick's forearms, untucking his hands and weaving them into his own, pulling Patrick closer.

“That’s. Yeah.” Patrick clears his throat. “That’s fair.”

“I give you space to be broken. I don’t think anyone else does that for you.” David kisses the line of his scar through his shirt. “Not even your buddy, Ted.”

“They don’t,” Patrick agrees.

“And whether you’re broken or not, I tell you you’re beautiful. Not nearly as much as I think it, but I don’t think anyone else has ever done that for you.” David says. Patrick’s face is blank, but not masked. He’s processing. “How’s that for an argument?”

“That’s, um. Yeah. That’s solid.”

Patrick leans in, his hands still locked with David. Patrick’s breath is hot as it escapes into David’s mouth, his hands pulling on their intertwined fingers, needing David closer as he kisses him.

“You forgot something,” Patrick says, nose pressed against his, eyelashes soft on his cheeks. 

“Well I was going to mention the fucking, but I thought it might be too much of a tonal shift,” David says. Patrick’s head slides into its place against David’s neck, and David can feel the laughter roll through him.

“The fucking is part of it. I was going to say that you’re fun. You make life fun. It’s still just as hard but . . . at least with you I get to laugh. It’s been that way since I met you. So it doesn’t feel as hard. Anymore.”

“Hm,” David says. It’s his turn to process. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me fun before. My wallet maybe, but not me.”

“They missed out,” Patrick says against his chest.

“Does this mean you like my place?” David asks.

“I do. But what was the thing you needed me to decide?

“Well, if I measured correctly, this wall is shared between your space and mine. Which means if we wanted to cut an opening in it—now, or at some point down the line—we could use your space as a living room and this space as a bedroom. If you want.”

“Where would the door go?” Patrick asks, nodding as he looks around.

“Right here,” David says, standing against the wall and waving his arms in demonstration.

“Yeah. I think it’s perfect,” Patrick says, crossing over to him, bracketing his arms around him against the wall as he kisses him long and slow and deep. 

“Hey,” David says, pausing them just long enough to get the words out. “It’s good to have you home.” 

\-----

Two weeks later, Patrick relaxes against the pillows on his bed and watches David grab supplies. Patrick reaches a spit-slick hand to stroke his semi-hard cock, two long pulls that make David groan and sink into the bed with him. 

They’ve been finding their way back to each other, into each other, since the baseball game. David has been in rare form tonight. He is going deliberately slowly, like he wants to give them both time to store every distinct touch and movement and kiss in their memories.

David sucks playfully on the skin below Patrick’s ribs, chuckling at the way he shudders as it tickles. He prepares him, his fingers curling relentlessly inside him until Patrick is begging to be filled. 

David settles in lower to lick his way up his shaft. Patrick loves the way David tries a little more each time, like he’s patiently sorting out what Patrick merely enjoys from what takes him apart. Right now, he’s doing all the things that take him apart.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” David says, coming back up to take Patrick’s mouth and grab the condom and more of the lube. They’re talking about not using the condoms anymore—they’re worth so much in trade and everyone was tested as part of the health screening to enter the bunkers—but the barriers have been helpful as they reestablish their connection.

David rolls it on and applies the lube. Patrick takes his hand and sucks the rest of it off his fingers. 

“I like the one with honey,” Patrick says.

“Apparently it has antibacterial properties,” David says, shrugging with a self-deprecating eye roll. He nudges Patrick a little bit so he rolls over on his stomach and tugs on Patrick's hips to raise them.

“Good?” Patrick asks when he’s in place. 

“Yes. Fuck, I love when you do this for me,” David says. His hands brush down Patrick’s back, over his ass, into the crease at the bottom, leaving fissions in their wake. Patrick is still getting used to the leathery feel of David’s fingers where the new calluses have formed. 

David enters slowly through the ring of muscle, his hands massaging Patrick’s hips to help him work through the pressure. It’s been a long time since they’ve done this. It’s a lot, at first. David is a lot, in a lot of ways, and all of them work for Patrick. Including this. _Fuck._ Especially this.

Patrick leans back into him, wanting more. As David thrusts, nudging against the spot that makes Patrick gasp, he lays sharp kisses against his back, one hand pressed against the iron bar of the headboard to improve his leverage. Patrick loves how rough David is when they fuck this way. With most of Patrick’s tender, scarred skin facing away from him, David is much less careful in his handling. Patrick loves the way he commits to Patrick's body this way, when he can scratch and knead and clench his hands wherever he wants.

“More,” Patrick wines, which David has learned really means harder. David pauses long enough to apply a little more lube and take Patrick in his hand. About fucking time, too, because Patrick needs to come. He wants this to last forever, but he needs to come.

Patrick is a begging, pleading, whining mess, but it works. David starts again, giving Patrick everything wants, stroking and driving into him. Patrick comes at last, hot and wet, his body clenching around David who groans and starts muttering nonsensically. He peppers his babbling with Patrick’s name as he finishes inside him. 

\-----

Later, they rinse and dry off. David has rigged up a shower in the bathroom in his side of the building, cutting a hole in the window frame to route a pipe from the rain collection system he had Jake mount to the roof of the porch outside.

“This is pretty impressive,” Patrick says, looking at the setup as he towels off.

“Thanks,” David says, pleased. 

“You— You’re different,” Patrick says quietly.

“Hm,” David murmurs, pleased again, although he’s not sure he’s meant to be. He’s enjoying the opportunity to change some of the things he has never particularly liked about himself, even if he can’t control that other things are changing with them.

“You’re different too,” David says. And that’s just as true. Since Patrick decided to take a break in the search for his parents, to give time for the work he’s already done to spread, he seems lighter. More peaceful. And more invested in what he is building with David. 

They settle back in the bed, Patrick nestled against David’s chest, David’s hand tracing lightly up his arm to the outside of his scar, avoiding what he knows are the most sensitive areas.

"How are you feeling about upstairs now that you've been up here for a month?" Patrick asks.

“The longer I’m up here, things from the old world don’t seem as important as they used to. But then I worry about that sometimes. Like who am I if I don’t care about the things that used to matter to me?” David asks.

“You’re whoever you want to be, David,” Patrick replies, like it’s just that simple. Like it should feel freeing. It doesn’t.

“Well that’s easy for you to say. The things that mattered to you before are useful here.”

“I might be a little more accustomed to sleeping on something besides Egyptian cotton than you are. But really, that’s about it. In the old world, I had a nice apartment in the city, I could manage to warm up food from the freezer, and I was really good at filling out complicated government paperwork and making well-organized spreadsheets. You know how useful those skills are in this world? Skills, interests, even your pretty face . . . ” David smiles and rolls his eyes, “That’s not even close to all that you are.”

“I’m still not convinced any of who I am will be useful, though,” David says, trying to scrunch up his face enough to hide the tears threatening to fall.

“The lube is _ very _ useful,” Patrick says. 

“I'll have you know most people come to me for the moisturizer. But that doesn't really feel like what I'm supposed to be. I want to find something that matters to people.”

“Sometimes I think the whole idea finding what we're supposed to be is left over from the old world. Our only choice is to be useful in this world. It's a shared calling . . . And your part in it can change as often as you want.”

“Well I’d like a starting point, at least,” David says. 

“You know one of the things I realized as we passed through communities between here and Pinewood, is that the only thing people who are remaking the world have in common is that they have found a way to be truly alive up here. So maybe focus on what makes you feel alive. The rest will work itself out.”

“And somehow that will make me the next Benjamin Franklin?” David asks. Patrick smiles, remembering their conversation the day of the storm under the dome, the first day they kissed.

“Sure. Or maybe you can be the first David Rose.” 

David's hand stills where it was tracing the lines of Patrick's palm. When Patrick holds his eyes with his own, the person David is now, here, is reflected back at him. David’s mouth trembles a little and he has to look away. If he spends too long wrapped in Patrick’s earnestness, he really won’t recognize himself. 

“All hail Prince David,” David jokes, seeing the copy of _ The Little Prince _ on the nightstand. 

“That’s a bit of a stretch. I think a monarchy is . . . unlikely.” 

“If you’re any kind of boyfriend, you’ll play along,” David says sourly. 

Then he realizes what he’s said. It’s the first time they’ve said _boyfriend_ since Patrick came home. Patrick rests his chin on David’s chest and smiles at him. Steady. 

“Fine, Prince David,” he says, pressing languid kisses into his neck, his cheek, his lips. Then he pulls away just enough to speak softly against David's thrumming skin. “Long may you fucking reign.” 

\-----

When David opens the door on Tier 7 for the last time, it no longer feels like home. Alexis is upstairs full time now, too. It’s just an empty room now. He took the sheets off his bed so he and Patrick would have a spare set. The mattress is bare. The sofa and chairs are moved too, now that they’ve cut the opening between the two buildings. There’s a rectangle on the wall where the painting by one of his artist friends in New York used to hang, an abstract red smear that was supposed to represent a phoenix.

The door to his parents’ room is open. He hears them talking quietly and clears his throat.

“David, is that you?” his mom asks, coming in.

“Hey,” he says.

“See, John, I told you he would come back.”

“I’m just getting my old notebooks and making the rounds to see if there’s anything else I forgot,” David says.

“Oh. Well, I’m delighted we were here whilst you grace us with your presence on this final occasion, David,” she says. 

“David, your mother started reentry training,” his father says, coming through the door to join them. 

“Alas, it’s true. I’m embarking there now so Theodore can teach me how to apply a com-press.”

“Patrick says it’s going well,” David says. Which is true, more or less, when he’s not complaining about her steamrolling him.

“How is Patrick?” his dad asks. “I haven’t seen much of him now that I’m done with the training.”

“He’s good,” David says, unable to stop the small smile that blooms on his face whenever he thinks of his boyfriend. “But anyway, I need to get going. It’s a long walk back. But, ah, maybe the four of us can have dinner next week.”

“Yes, indeed. And you’re welcome to come use the shower any time,” his mom adds, giving him a pointed glance that suggests he is looking a little more ragged than he used to. The idea that he looks different, that he’s starting to wear his new life, causes his face to scrunch into a private smile. 

“We don’t say it enough, but I love you, son,” his dad says, hand on his shoulder.

“And I, too, hold great affection for you,” his mom says. His dad clears his throat. “And I love you. Very much.”

“I- I love you both. Too,” David says, because it’s true. 

None of them quite know what to do with that exchange, so he reminds his mom that training is starting soon. His dad makes excuses about meeting someone in the Rec Center, and they both hustle back to their room. He closes the door between their chambers, leaning on it. He looks around, thinking about his time here, trapped and yet miraculously alive, even if he struggled to live with that sometimes. 

He thinks about Alexis, about his parents, about the time they spent together, the stress of the situation bringing them closer and making them a family. It was his mother’s idea to seek out Ray and his bunkers. Which makes sense, David thinks, since if there’s one thing Moira Rose knows for sure, it’s that the world is out to get her. 

He gathers the small stack of notebooks out of a drawer in his closet and slides them carefully into his backpack around the other small items he already packed a few days earlier. As he’s leaving, he sees the Polaroids. There are three of them stuck to the side of the icebox. One of Patrick’s hand gingerly holding the Polaroid of David with the cactus. One of Patrick sitting on the couch on Tier 1, looking relaxed. And one of them together, David smiling at the irony that he’s supposed to be the “something soft.” Patrick smiling because even that early on, he already knows it’s true. He slides them out from under the magnets and tucks them into one of his notebooks. 

He stops at the open door to the ramp and looks back one more time before closing it softly behind him.

\-----

Three months after David moves upstairs for good, the community organizes a party to celebrate the Winter Solstice and the third anniversary of the day the first group left Bunker 8. It’s a big affair, with people making food and games specially for the occasion. David had organized the daytime festivities and spent most of the day running between groups and events.

As darkness falls, several townspeople build a fire in the middle of the intersection outside of the old store where he and Patrick live. Roland and June—who Miguel thinks is expecting a litter of puppies—make the rounds, begging scraps and finally settling next to Patrick in front of the bench they’ve dragged over from the backyard. The fire provides a pleasant warmth, the night air almost cold now that they’re well into December. 

“It feels a little weird, gathering around a big fire like this, like for fun,” David says, looking around at the flame-lit faces, glowing and smiling and laughing.

“Oh?” Patrick says, pulled from his own thoughts and not following.

“Fire destroyed everything. It should have a bad association.”

“I guess I can see that,” Patrick agrees. “When I was a kid I used to get frustrated when things didn’t go how I wanted them to go. My mom taught me this thing about claiming the present for the past. It’s kind of my coping mechanism these days.”

“I don’t think I get it,” David says apologetically. He wants to.

“It means I claim this night, this fire, for the younger me who saw the world burning and was terrified the destruction would never end. I claim this community built around it for the younger me who felt isolated and alone in the bunker. I claim this place as my home for the younger me who took a job hundreds of miles from everything he knew, not realizing he might never get home again.”

David brushes a callused thumb tenderly along Patrick’s cheekbone.

David’s feelings about life upstairs are so complicated, but here with this man, in this place, everything is simple. There’s nowhere else he could go and still have this. There’s nothing else he would accept in exchange. He wouldn’t even take his old life back if it meant giving this up. 

Patrick looks at him intently, then takes one of his hands and holds it in his lap. He studies David’s hand for a minute, tracing over the small scar in the flesh at the base of his thumb from David’s first, and so far last, encounter with farm implements. He runs his thumb along the bracelet he gave him when he came home from Pinewood. It’s soft now, formed to David’s wrist. When Patrick looks up at David again, the glow of the fire reflects in his eyes, turning them to gold. 

“I’m in love with you, David. I love you. And I claim this love for the younger me who was confused and scared that he might never know what right feels like.”

“Patrick, I—” David wants to continue but he can’t. There’s a thick lump in his throat.

“Hey, you don’t have to say it back,” Patrick says. But that’s not it at all, so David tries again. 

“No. It’s just— I don’t want to mess this up.”

“Hey, you’re not messing up anything. It’s okay. This isn’t—“

“Can you just please shhh . . . one second,” David says, placing a finger briefly up to Patrick’s mouth with a kind but impatient smile. Patrick nods. 

“Patrick, I love you, too.” 

Patrick’s face breaks into a wide smile, and David kisses that smile soundly with his own in front of the flickering fire.

\-----

An hour later, Alexis bangs a few pans together to get everyone’s attention, gripping Ted’s hand. Ted makes eye contact with Patrick across the fire and winks. Patrick reaches over and grabs David’s hand, thinking he’s going to need it.

“So I know everyone here knows my buddy Patrick,” Ted starts. 

Patrick looks at David, who smiles at him and then ducks his head to kiss his cheek in reassurance. He’s clearly in on whatever this is, so it’s not about Ted and Alexis like Patrick assumed.

“Most of you newbies probably don’t know this,” Ted continues, “But Patrick used to be a pretty good guitar player. Our first night upstairs was probably the hardest in my life, and Patrick took out his guitar and sang ‘Anthem,’ by Leonard Cohen. And we all cried and hugged and somehow, after that, I knew we would be okay.”

Ted has turned serious now, smiling softly at Patrick. Patrick shakes his head, smiling back. It’s a good memory, in spite of everything. 

Suddenly it feels like everyone is smiling at him. It’s overwhelming. He feels like he might full-on cry for the first time in years. David puts his arm around him and squeezes his shoulder in reassurance.

“Anyway, a few of us were wondering—if it isn’t too much _ treble _—if maybe you’d play it for us,” Ted finishes to a mixture of groans and laughter.

“I would, but my guitar is down four strings,” Patrick says. 

Ted just grins and Alexis flutters over behind the table where the food was set up and comes back holding his guitar, restrung. 

“How did you do this?” Patrick asks, incredulous.

“I met a guy last time I was in Elmdale who had a broken guitar with good strings. He let me take them. And I may have had some help sneaking it out of your place.” 

Ted nods at David and Patrick turns, shocked. 

“How did you do this without me noticing?” he asks. 

David shrugs.

“You’re sort of easy to distract, honey,” David says, voice low in his ear. 

Patrick just shakes his head. 

Patrick tunes the guitar carefully and fusses a bit, trying to recall his muscle memory. As he starts playing “Anthem,” he chokes up a little on the chorus.

_ Ring the bells that still can ring _  
_ Forget your perfect offering _  
_ There is a crack, a crack in everything _ _  
That’s how the light gets in_

Twyla joins in, along with Gwen and a few others, and they make it through. David’s hand stays warm on his back the whole time.

“You taking requests?” George calls out. 

“Sure,” Patrick says. “Although I’ll warn you, my dad taught me to play guitar using his favorite songs, which means if it’s not one of the top ten hits of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, I probably won’t be able to play it on short notice like this.” 

“You’ve been holding out on me with this voice,” David murmurs next to him. “But somehow I’m going to find you better music if this becomes a tradition.”

“I might be able to figure out some Mariah if I have time to experiment,” Patrick says, smiling fondly.

“That’s a start.” 

Patrick takes a few requests. He fumbles his way through “Teach Your Children” and “Gimme Shelter” and several others, struck by how relevant the old music feels in this strange landscape, decades after it was written.

It’s good, he thinks, to have music again. It joins the other sounds that are coming back, starting to underscore every day and night: the whine of cicadas, chatter of the birds, winter wind howling low through the streets, rustling trees in the breeze, soft pattering rain on the roof, squirrels scratching along the top of the fence, people laughing with each other around a crackling fire. Life. 

There’s something about playing his parents’ favorite music too. It’s a reminder that wherever they might be, they’re alive here, in him.

“Play a love song!” Alexis calls. Patrick can practically feel David next to him crafting an elaborate scheme for her demise.

“Okay, everyone. I think this will be the last one.” Patrick's palms are cramped from the chord positions, his fingertips sore from pressing on the strings.

Patrick turns a little so he can see David better, smiling devilishly at him. 

“I have a song in mind for you, but I need more time to work out how to play it. So until then, this will have to do.”

Then he starts to play, changing the pronouns of the familiar Beatles tune.

_ Something in the way he moves _  
_ Attracts me like no other lover _  
_ Something in the way he woos me _  
_ I don't want to leave him now _ _  
You know I believe and how_

_ Somewhere in his smile he knows _  
_ That I don't need no other lover _  
_ Something in his style that shows me _  
_ I don't want to leave him now _ _  
You know I believe and how_

Patrick plays the rest of the song, smiling as the irritation and embarrassment fall from David’s face until the only thing that is left, shining like a flame in the dark black night, is love.

\------

David wakes up two weeks later, disappointed to find he’s alone. It must be late, he thinks. The room is unusually bright. His eyes hurt. Stevie came over for dinner the night before, her first long stretch upstairs since she finished training. Perhaps they overindulged on fruit wine.

“David!” Patrick says, running up the stairs from the foyer, coughing a little as he reaches the door to their bedroom. “David, get up, you have to see this!”

He doesn’t wait to explain, just turns and runs back down, Roland and June yipping at him from the front porch. David pulls on his pants and T-shirt and trudges downstairs.

The first thing David notices when he steps outside is the way the ground looks. It’s green. Not muted green, not gray-green. Technicolor green. The earth around him seems to glow like a room where a drape has just been pulled open, a window letting in a harsh, bright light.

“David, look,” Patrick says, gripping his arm with one hand and pointing up with the other.

David follows Patrick’s gaze upwards. They both have to shield their eyes. The sky is still mostly gray, but a bright swath of clear blue cuts through to the east where the clouds have parted. Poking out on the edge of the clouds, its rays refracting through the murky air below, is the sun.

It has been five years since either of them have seen it. 

Patrick is still holding tight to David’s arm. David turns to smile at him, and then freezes, awestruck. The sun catches honey-colored strands in his hair that David has never noticed before in the constant cloud-cover. 

“Hi,” Patrick says, smiling, eyes wet.

“Hi.” David's voice is groggy and thick. He clears his throat.

David presses his lips to Patrick’s forehead and holds his face in his hands. When David speaks again, it’s soft.

“The sun looks good on you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://www.etsy.com/listing/706379372/mens-black-doublewrap-braided-rubber?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=mens+rubber+bracelet+braided&ref=sr_gallery-1-39&organic_search_click=1) is similar to what I imagined for the bracelet Patrick made out of bicycle tube rubber (minus the clasp).
> 
> The process of claiming parts of the present for your past self is a mechanism one of my friends uses to practice gratitude and I’ve always wanted to steal it for something like this (with permission, thanks N.B.). 
> 
> I left most song lyrics out of the story itself for Artistic Reasons, but I included the lyrics to Leonard Cohen's song “Anthem” below. I had another song in its place until two days ago, because I really wanted to avoid one that was too on-point or message-y. But ultimately I kept coming back to the visuals in the song and how they parallel with this story, and it had to be this one.
> 
> I looked and looked for a cover of the song with a nice Patrick-y acoustic guitar arrangement but didn't find one I liked. I did find [this one](https://youtu.be/pJsTYn2mPwk), and stopped searching even though it wasn't what I intended, because this person's voice should be shared.
> 
> _The birds they sang, at the break of day_  
_Start again, I heard them say_  
_Don’t dwell on what has passed away_  
_Or what is yet to be_
> 
> _Yeah the wars they will be fought again_   
_The holy dove she will be caught again_   
_Bought and sold and bought again_   
_The dove is never free_
> 
> _Ring the bells that still can ring_   
_Forget your perfect offering_   
_There is a crack in everything_   
_That’s how the light gets in_
> 
> _We asked for signs, the signs were sent_   
_The birth betrayed, the marriage spent_   
_Yeah the widowhood of every government_   
_Signs for all to see_
> 
> _I can’t run no more, with that lawless crowd_   
_While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud_   
_But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up a thundercloud_   
_And they’re going to hear from me_
> 
> _Ring the bells that still can ring_   
_Forget your perfect offering_   
_There is a crack, a crack in everything_   
_That’s how the light gets in_
> 
> _You can add up the parts, you won’t have the sum_   
_You can strike up the march, there is no drum_   
_Every heart, every heart to love will come_   
_But like a refugee_
> 
> _Ring the bells that still can ring_   
_Forget your perfect offering_   
_There is a crack, a crack in everything_   
_That’s how the light gets in_


	9. Blackbird fly (Epilogue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I initially thought of this as an epilogue, although it violates a few of my personal rules about epilogues, namely that they should stand alone and not be required to resolve story lines. If those are your rules too, you can just call it Chapter 9. Thanks for reading.

David stands and stretches, feeling the muscles in his back shudder as his spine pops into proper alignment again. He needs to learn to work in the garden crouching, instead of hanging down from his hips. There is a lot he still needs to learn, but it doesn’t overwhelm him like it used to. He has learned to be more patient with himself these days. 

He takes the mint he just harvested and bundles it into a soft knit bag refashioned from one of his sweaters that became too tattered to wear, then tucks it into his pack next to the water bottles. Patrick is still at the dispatch office in the old town hall, trying to send word ahead that they’ll be traveling so people will know to expect them passing through. After over a year of searching through a developing network of low-voltage radio operators and sending letters with travelers, hoping they would reach somewhere in the vicinity of Patrick’s hometown, they’ve learned that Patrick’s parents survived. 

His hometown is no longer livable so the residents dispersed near and far. Just last week, Patrick learned there is a contingent of Brewers from Cedar Grove who were last seen in Elm Valley, a community that is just three days’ brisk walk away. His parents are believed to be among them. They discussed sending a letter directly to them, to see if they could get a reply. But mail is still expensive and unreliable, couriered at the mercy of strangers, and tediously slow. So they are just going to walk there and see what they can find. 

David is trying to keep calm about all the things that could go wrong. The road can be unpredictable. They’ll be navigating using old maps and erratic signage. There’s always the possibility they will get there and won’t even be able to find Clint and Marcy. They could have since moved on . . . or worse. And even if they do find them, they’ll be meeting David for the first time as Patrick’s husband, which will certainly be a surprise if not an outright shock.

_ Husband. _ That word still feels precious to him, a word he never thought he’d say in the old world, much less the new. They married in late summer almost two years ago, eighteen months after David’s first night upstairs. There’s no government to issue a piece of paper calling it marriage, but they stood and made promises to each other in front of their real and adopted families. So he’s claiming the words  _ married  _ and  _ husband _ for his younger self who assumed no one would ever want to make those promises to him. 

Speaking of husband, where is he? It’s not like Patrick to be late. They were supposed to leave already, and if they don’t take off soon, they’ll have to spend an extra night on the road.

“Well, here you are,” his mother’s voice drawls behind him. 

He turns to see her standing in the open gate, hand on her hip. He sort of loves that she insists on wearing her Givenchy lace-up heels and all of her other high fashion pieces, even though they’ve never been less practical. David’s parents still spend their nights downstairs. His dad is the new Operations Manager of Bunkers 13 and 14, allowing Stevie to come upstairs permanently. Most of the silo’s systems are reaching the end of their usable lives, so people will have to continue to make their reentry at their own pace. Everyone spends at least part of each day upstairs now, his mother included.

“Were you looking for me?” he asks.

“Yes, in fact, I’ve been scouring far and wide for you, David,” she says.

“I haven’t left my house since I woke up today. How far and wide could you have possibly scoured?” David rights his pack and zips up the compartment he’s just loaded. 

“That’s not the point, David.” 

“Okay, well I’m about to head out assuming I can find Patrick, but you’re welcome to walk with me if there’s something on your mind,” he says.

“Oh your beau is with Stevie. They were having a little breakfast chin-wag at the old town hall, so I thought I’d come and see what my son is doing with his last hour before his overland adventure.”

“Just finished packing up. Why don’t I get you another jar of the apple cider shampoo before I go in case you run out while I’m gone,” David says. They do this dance weekly, and he doesn’t have time to follow along on her circuitous conversational route to his homemade products today. And anyway she’s carrying her canvas tote bag so it’s not like she’s being subtle. 

“Oh, well that’s a fabulous idea,” she says. “You know, I may be low on the moisturizer, too. And Alexis mentioned she was out of the lip balm, and I’ll be seeing her for lunch. Perhaps I could also take one of those turkey biscuits for Roland.”

“Roland? He’s still hanging around Dad?” David asks. Roland injured his paw on one of his recent hunting endeavors, and Johnny took him in while he recovered. But he’s been fully healed for a week or more.

“Well I don’t know, David! He seems to have adopted your father, and I’m not convinced there’s anything to be done about it.”

“So you’re bringing him biscuits,” David says. He feels his mouth turn up at the corners and she smiles back at him—a soft smile he’s only seen in the new world. “Let’s go in and I’ll give you a few things to hold you over until I’m back.”

The first floor of his home looks much the same as it did when he first saw it, back when it was just the vacant store below Patrick's room. They have a plank they use to barricade the door at night and a nicer board in the broken pane that has become a community message board. David cleared out most of the empty shelves, using the locking cabinets on the perimeter to hold his various jars and bottles. He doesn’t make all the salves and creams and balms himself. He works with several different people to source ingredients and troubleshoot formulas. 

While they’re inside, he takes a minute to check the safe in the former office and make sure everything is tucked away for his trip.

“Is there significantly more than the last time I was here?” she calls from the wood counter, looking around. The long table in the center of the space, the one they use for community gatherings and family dinners, is piled with various wares and crafts that David obviously didn’t make. 

“Oh, most of this is for the Summer Festival. Alexis is supposed to come organize it while we’re gone.”

The Summer Festival was David’s idea. The first one, the year before, became an opportunity to trade goods with nearby communities and celebrate all they have to be thankful for. Enough interest was piqued that planning the second one has taken up most of his time. Most days, the festival feels like the thing Patrick has been talking about, the thing that makes David feel alive. On some days though, it makes him want to strangle someone. It has been challenging to organize a regional trade event without the aid of all the devices David used to rely on. 

David takes the bag from her and starts stocking it with her regular items. 

He has been thinking it might be easier to set up a trading post going forward, let people come to him. He could be less reliant on the time of year and able to adjust to the seasonal nature of certain goods. And people could leave things and trade as they pass through. There’s no currency, and passers-by are too infrequent to make something like that work now. But maybe in the next year or so, he could turn his little ad-hoc community gathering space into something more official. He’ll have to talk to Patrick about it while they’re walking.

“Well even so,” his mom says, looking at the array of items he either makes or sources for regular trade. “You’ve developed quite the well-stocked apothecary here.“

“Hm,” he says, feeling a little jitter up his spine, a nagging of a memory he can’t place. He hasn’t gotten that feeling in this space in a long time, and it unsettles him a little. He tries to refocus on the task at hand. “And this is the last time you’re taking anything without bringing my empty jars back.”

“Really, David, is that necessary? You do come to visit us at least once a week. You can always take them with you. And I did help you make the lip balm this last time.”

“You did. You did. Although since we weren’t able to use half of the batch you made, I’m not sure that helps make up for the missing jars.” He says it kindly—they’d laughed a lot as he tried to walk her through the steps. It’s the most fun he's ever had with her in either world. She gives him another one of those small smiles, unguarded. She has not had a linear or easy path to reentry, but she’s finally trying with all of her signature grit.

“I trust you’ll be safe,” she says, reaching to squeeze his free hand. It’s not a question, but it is. He swallows and nods. 

David hands her the bag, clearing his throat to try to dislodge the thick lump there.

“Yeah. As safe as we can be. Want to walk with me back to the town hall?”

“Oh, no, I’m going in the other direction,” she says. She gives him a hard squeeze on his bicep, blows him a quick kiss goodbye, and leaves out the front, her heels tapping on the wood floor.

David finishes closing up their home, picks up his pack, and sets off. On his way to the town hall, he passes the big oak tree shading the ground where they’d exchanged vows. A week after they married, the tree dropped its first acorns since the fires. David keeps a jar of them to remember that day, along with the two Polaroids that actually turned out. The tree has just dropped its first acorns for this year, too. David picks one of them up, worrying it between his fingers as he walks.

One of June’s litter is sitting outside the town hall, sleeping on the porch with his head resting on his paws. When he sees David, his tail starts thumping against the railing. The mutt is an arresting combination of Roland’s size and June’s thick black coat. He doesn’t have his dad’s skill for scrounging, but he is much less homely. 

“Hi, Bear. Is your friend in here with Aunt Stevie?” he asks. The dog sighs in response and rolls to his side. David greets Bear with scratches to his favorite spot on his belly, then offers him one of the turkey biscuits he snatched when he filled his mom’s bag. Bear gets up, shakes himself off, and follows David inside. 

Sure enough, he finds Patrick leaning against Stevie’s desk. The two of them are laughing about something. 

“Is he coming with us?” David asks, pointing to the dog behind him. Bear is two years old now, so he’s not a puppy, but unlike his sisters and brother who roam the town much like their dad used to, Bear always sticks close to Patrick. 

“Well I doubt he’ll be very happy if he has to stay,” Patrick says. “Hi,” he adds, wrapping David in a warm, lingering hello kiss. 

“And you would be sad to leave him behind. Hi,” he responds against Patrick’s cheek before stealing another kiss. They get a little lost in it until Stevie coughs meaningfully. David loves that, even years into this, there is something special about greeting each other. It’s probably about not being able to stay connected by phone when they are apart, he thinks. And also that they’re still head-over-fucking-heels for each other.

“I told you we’d talk him into letting you come, buddy!” Patrick says once he can bring himself to pull away, bending down to give Bear a pat. Bear does one of his full-body wags he inherited from his father. 

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but you two have been engaged in general merriment for quite some time now,” David says, “and we need to get going.”

“Did he just say merriment?” Stevie asks.

“I think he did,” Patrick replies. They exchange an inside joke with their eyes. 

“I’ve just spent the last half hour with my mother, so.”

“Well that explains it,” Patrick says like it explains nothing, still grinning with Stevie. “Anyway he’s right, we need to go. Good talking with you Chairperson Budd.”

Stevie rolls her eyes, but there’s the slightest hint of pride in her smile. Both of them know her well enough to catch it. Ray—who will be the area's representative in a new regional assembly to establish a government—has opted to turn over local decision-making to a town council, to be selected by the community. Stevie was recently voted in as the chair. David’s own mother was also elected as the silo representative to the council to the shock of everyone who knows her, not least of all Stevie’s who now gets to listen to her unfiltered opinions day in and day out. David thinks they have more in common than either of them realize. He suspects neither of them would appreciate hearing that assessment, so he keeps it to himself.

“When will you be back?” Stevie asks.

“Depends what we find,” Patrick says. 

“I hope you find them,” she says, blinking hard. 

“Thanks, Stevie,” he says. She comes around the desk and lands in his arms, hugging him tight for a few seconds and wiping her eyes as she lets go. 

“And you—” she says, turning to David with a pointed finger. “You had better come back, because I’m not helping Alexis run this fucking Summer Festival without you.”

“You know I would never leave you to run an event at the mercy of my sister.” 

“Okay,” she says. Her lip trembles again and he pulls her in. He holds her for a long time like that, crushed against him. Patrick smiles at David over her head and nods toward the door, indicating that he’ll wait outside. 

“And I would definitely never leave her to run an event at the mercy of you, either,” he says when she pulls away at last. She punches him in the side but wraps back around him, holding on tight for one last quick hug before he leaves.

“Everything will be fine,” she says, reading his mind the way she has from the beginning.

“What if—”

“Nope. No what-ifs. You will find them. And finding out their son is alive and happy is all they’ll care about.”

“When did you become an optimist?” David asks, brushing a piece of lint off her flannel shirt.

“I think I’ve been spending too much time with your husband. It’s turning me soft.”

“It usually does the opposite for me, but I know what you mean,” David says, grinning.

“Okay. Go,” she says with a half-hearted eye roll. “And I’ll see you when you come back.”

He kisses her one more time on her forehead before slinging his pack on his back and heading out.

\-----

Patrick is navigating for the first day of the trip, having more experience traversing the surrounding countryside. David thinks he knows roughly which way they are headed though, so he’s surprised when they turn off on a dirt road. 

“Would you mind if we made a stop?” Patrick asks.

“No. Where are we stopping?”

“Bunker 8,” he says.

“Oh.” David doesn’t ask a follow up. He knows Patrick will tell him what this is about when he’s ready.

In a few minutes, the shallow rise of a dome appears above a big grassy berm surrounded by security fencing. The garage door in front of them has a tall faded-red number eight painted on it. There’s a pile of rocks near the entrance and Patrick stops by it and drops his pack off his back, opening the top flap. He pulls a large rock out of the top and holds it, studying the pile.

“What is this?” David asks.

“It’s a cairn.”

“Okay,” David says. He’s heard of cairns—they’re often used to mark trails and roads now—but that doesn’t really explain what this one is about. “So we came here to leave a rock?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Patrick stands for a long time, staring at the pile, passing the stone from one hand to the other. 

“They’re going to start decommissioning the vacant silos. By the time we get back, this one will be mostly stripped for parts. All the people that lived here have been coming by to look for things that they left, or things that were taken from them. I thought I might look for mine.”

“Oh. Like inside?”

Patrick looks at David, and he can see there’s fear in Patrick’s eyes. But also resolve. He has not been back here since the night when he piled everything he owned into his bags and left.

“Yeah. Downstairs.”

Patrick sets the rock on the ground in front of the cairn. He tells Bear to sit, which he does dutifully. They set their backpacks next to him and go inside. The place is dark and ghostly with only the emergency storm lighting to guide them. Their steps echo from the bottom of the light well as Patrick leads him down the stairs. The silo is similar in construction to Bunker 13, but the spaces are finished with more basic materials. It’s designed for utility, not luxury. 

They start on Tier 6 where Patrick’s chamber was. It is at most half the size of David’s, with an efficient but cramped layout. It is empty except for a lofted bed frame and a lamp on the floor next to it. 

“Did you leave something in here?” David asks.

“No. I just wanted to see it. I wanted to remind myself that it’s just a room. Just a shitty room that kept me alive long enough to make a life with you.”

“Hey,” David says, gripping his shoulder. “I’m really glad it did.” Patrick gives him a rueful smile and reaches for his hand, squeezing tight. He leads them out, shutting the door behind them.

“Robin said she found a bunch of her stuff Eli took in the storage room below this. I just want to look there. If we don’t find anything, we’ll get going.”

“Okay,” David says.

They do find something though, after some rummaging. It’s a box that used to hold twelve cans of baked beans and now contains all the notes and photos Patrick lost. He flips through them briefly, as though to ensure everything is accounted for, and then they make their way out. 

“You okay?” David asks, looking back at the door with the giant number eight printed on it as Patrick pulls it down and cranks the lock back into place.

“I’m okay. I felt safe in there with you. Do you know what that’s like, after all those years? To feel safe doing something that used to terrify me?”

“I do,” David says, pulling him close as he brushes his lips against the ridge of his cheekbone. “Maybe we mean it different ways, but I do.”

He opens the box again and takes out a few photos. For his parents in case they lost everything, he explains. He leaves the box with the rest of the photos next to the door, saying Ted offered to come by and pick it up later. Then Patrick lifts the stone next to their packs and reaches it to the top of the cairn, balancing it on the one below it.

“There’s a Gaelic blessing. . .” Patrick starts. “I don’t know how to pronounce it but it translates roughly to ‘I’ll put a stone on your stone.’ It means ‘I won’t forget you.’ It’s tradition to take a stone and put it on someone’s cairn in memory of your time with them. I don’t know who started it but everyone who lived here has left a stone. To claim the memories, maybe.”

“Mmm,” David murmurs. He’s not sure what else to say. He’s not sure can ever fully understand what life was like downstairs for Patrick. So he just puts his arm around his husband and squeezes him, kisses his temple and holds him upright as Patrick lets his tears fall in earnest for the first time in the new world. At last, he wipes his eyes and announces he’s ready to go.

\-----

They have spent most of the third day climbing a ridge that separates their community from the narrow dip that gives Elm Valley its name. At last, the ground levels off as they round a corner, emerging from a grove of trees into a small clearing.

“I need a minute,” David says, shrugging off his pack. 

Patrick fishes out the water bottles, handing one to David, along with a small jar of seeds from the sunflowers he started cultivating with the annual baseball tournament in mind. They’re different from the variety the community uses to make oil. These seeds are large and better for snacking.

The reminder of the game inspires him to give David a brief kiss as well. His cheek tastes pleasantly salty. He still can’t believe David is the one who started the baseball tradition. Most people were shocked when David agreed to come on this trek with him, but not Patrick. When David senses he is needed, as he most certainly is here, he comes easily. It’s the times he is not strictly needed, when he does things simply out of love—like a perfectly imperfect game of baseball—that take Patrick’s breath away. 

They sit quietly for awhile, the gentle breeze shivering through the trees and along their skin, relief after their long trek uphill. A red-tailed hawk dips in front of them sailing low into the valley with a screech, reverberating against the ridge. The sound sends chipmunks skittering across the ground and into the fallen hollow log behind them. 

“Where’s Bear?” David asks.

As if on cue, the dog emerges from the woods licking his chops. Whatever he found, he’s not sharing. He settles in and rests his head on Patrick’s shoe, taking advantage of the break.

There’s a nice view now that they’ve finally stopped climbing upwards. They can see the scattered settlement of Elm Valley about a half-mile downhill. There are a few houses along the narrow dirt road on the way down. The valley itself is stretched out before them, looking so verdant that it is almost a shock to their gray-weary systems. Patrick has heard the valley, which benefits from a wide river, is coming back even faster than their side of the ridge.

David stretches his legs. It has been a long walk, the farthest David has ever been on foot in his life. Patrick normally enjoys walking with David. It’s easy for them, when they’re going about all the tasks for the day, to get stuck talking about chores they are doing or work they need to do. On a long walk, they run out of those topics. Their conversation usually turns to smaller things, or sometimes bigger things, but intimate all the same. They haven’t been able to talk much for the last few hours though, with the exertion of the uphill climb. 

David stays quiet as they rest, which is fine. Patrick doesn’t have a lot to talk about anyway. He is anxious to get to the valley and start looking for his parents, but he thinks he’s doing a good job pretending to be patient so David can catch his breath and rehydrate. Patrick takes advantage of the break to down his water too. The mint David thought to bring hides the sootier flavors from their well and helps cool him from the inside out. 

He has to shield his eyes a bit when he tips his head back to drink. The sun is bright and blazing above them.

“They’re going to be so happy to see you,” David reassures, unbidden. It still throws Patrick off to be so utterly  _ known _ sometimes. Patrick understands that David can’t be sure if they’ll find anything, but he’s doing everything he can to keep Patrick thinking positively. 

“They’re going to love you,” Patrick says, squeezing David’s hand. 

David looks away, nervous, twisting his mouth. The moment is starting to feel too big. Patrick worries if he lets it get away from them, he will lose his nerve to see what’s in the valley.

“Let’s go,” he says. 

\-----

After an hour downhill, they have almost reached the river, still walking along the last half mile of the ridge. 

“Let’s start at the old sheriff’s office on Main Street,” Patrick says, shifting his pack on his shoulders. He has outlined the plan countless times now, but David knows repeating it is comforting for him. The closer they get to the town, the more visibly nervous Patrick becomes. 

“No matter what happens, I’ll be here. I love you,” David says, squeezing Patrick’s shoulders with a comforting shake before letting go. Patrick so rarely gets nervous that when he does, David finds it comes naturally to dip into his own otherwise limited resources of calm.

Something about the long descent, David’s first view of another town, first-hand evidence that other people lived, are living, has him feeling choked up. He forces the tears back. He’s not chancing red puffy eyes for a first meeting with his in-laws. 

They walk quietly, still too keyed up to talk much. They arrive at the first house on the lower part of the ridge, which doesn’t appear to be occupied. A well-fed tabby cat weaves in and out of a ragged fence, meowing at them until they have passed the last post. Bear dips his chest to the ground, tail batting the air, paws flat in front of him like he wants to play, and chases after the cat. Patrick and David keep walking, knowing he’ll rejoin them once Patrick is too far away for his liking. 

Once they are within sight of the next house, a short woman in a blue work shirt stands up from crouching beside her garden and stretches. David’s step stutters. He feels like he has seen that stretch before. A taller man with silver hair comes out from the open garage door, pushing a wheelbarrow, and says something to her they can’t quite hear. David can hear there’s a tone about it, like whatever he said was lovingly snarky. 

Patrick freezes and David almost plows into him. Oblivious, Patrick takes off again, walking faster. Then he flings his pack off and he’s racing down the hill toward the little yellow house on the side of the ridge. 

The woman catches sight of him and puts her hands to her mouth, muffling her startled, half-sobbed, “Oh!”

David has learned to accept that for as much as he can change and adapt to this new world, he’s not a runner. It doesn’t matter. He sees Patrick dive into the open arms of the woman at the garden. Once David drops his pack next to Patrick’s, he’s flying down the hill after him.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Gaelic for the cairn blessing “I’ll put a stone on your stone” is _Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn_. Cairns have a wide range of symbolism in different cultures. The meaning used here, about remembering your time with someone, is the one used by the Scottish side of my family.
> 
> All chapter titles are from the Beatles song “Blackbird.”
> 
> I had a little brainstorming session late one night in April. I decided to come up with all the things B13 could mean in an alternate universe (even if I didn’t end up using B13 itself). One became store B13 in The Last Rose Video. Several others may or may not see the light of day. And one was just a joke for a long time: Bunker 13. Until it wasn’t a joke anymore. Until it was this. I’m still not quite sure what this is, but thanks for all your lovely comments as I tried to sort it out. I know we have been gloriously swamped with amazing fic in this fandom lately, and it means a lot that you chose to read to the end. 
> 
> I knew the story I wanted to tell here, and I knew there were places I was struggling to tell it, but I couldn’t find them. [Pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smarty_Pants/pseuds/Pants) did. And then reread more than half of this at least three times as I reworked it. Pants, I’m so very grateful for your time and your wisdom and especially your friendship.


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